Rejection of policy only seen as the end of the beginning

NHIAA will 'likely' see another effort to limit amount of class time missed

Patricia Kennelly thinks the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association (NHIAA) will likely see another version of the policy regulating students missing class for sports that it rejected at a meeting of its governing council last week. She is the chairman of the NHIAA's Executive Council, and is also the principal of Inter-Lakes High School.

Kennelly's personal observation for why the policy failed to be adopted involved two issues. The first issue raised by the opposition on the council was that the policy would have made it inconvenient for schools to do that which the NHIAA itself does routinely: schedule athletic competitions so that student-athletes have to leave school early to travel to the events. Under current practices, regular season events are scheduled by the athletic administrators of the various schools, and the NHIAA sets the tournament schedules.

"There are current NHIAA tournament scheduling practices that result in loss of classroom time," Kennelly said. Some of the "no" votes were cast because, Kennelly said, it would be "inconsistent" for the NHIAA to adopt a policy that holds schools to a guideline that the NHIAA does not follow — at least not yet.

The second issue is that the policy was not practical in its timing. The proposed policy would have required a signed letter from the district superintendent to be on file with the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association (NHIAA) prior to releasing students from school. However, athletic schedules have already been set, so athletic administrators would have had to scramble to get letters signed and sent for seasons that are underway.

Kennelly said yesterday that it is "likely" that the NHIAA will see another policy proposal, amended to address the above concerns, in the future. She said most opposition to the policy was on practical matters, and there was "not any philosophical disagreement" with the thrust of the policy.

An Inter-Lakes inspiration

The proposed policy was inspired by the Inter-Lakes School Board. "It started with concerns raised by our board around the amount of time missed from classes," Inter-Lakes Superintendent Phil McCormack said. The superintendent, who also serves on the NHIAA's Executive Council, said he took the board's concerns to an NHIAA Executive Council meeting. "Lo and behold, there were some other districts experiencing the same issues." McCormack also said he was "one of several who spoke to the issue."

The council decided to establish an ad-hoc committee to study the issue, and McCormack was elected to chair the committee. Among many recommendations that the committee made was the proposed policy, which was rejected last week.

The policy that the NHIAA's ad-hoc committee came up with stated "schools are prohibited from taking instructional time out of their academic program in order to allow for participation in interscholastic athletics." In the event that leaving school early is unavoidable, the policy says, "a written authorization signed by the athletic administrator, school principal, and the superintendent of schools must be on file with the Executive Director of the NHIAA prior to such release."

Inter-Lakes high school teams play against schools as far away as Berlin, which, according to googlemaps.com, is about 86 miles, or two hours driving, from Meredith. Had the proposed ordinance passed, Inter-Lakes teams would still be able to leave school early, but they would have had to file a letter, signed by the school's administrators, prior to the event.

"The key issue is that they brought it to the superintendent," said Pat Corbin, executive director of the NHIAA. Even if the policy had passed, schools could have, in theory, seen just as much class time missed by athletes as is currently seen. The greatest difference proposed in the policy would be that the school's principal and superintendent would sign off for each instance that students leave school early for games. Under most circumstances, scheduling of games, and how soon the buses leave for those games, is left up to the athletic directors. Corbin said the proposal would have "brought the awareness to a higher level" of administration.

The policy would not have had any "teeth" to it, as Inter-Lakes Board Member Carl Johnson noted at a recent school board meeting. There isn't any language referring to repercussions or sanctions which would be enacted should a school defy the policy. Nevertheless, NHIAA Director Corbin felt the message sent by the association via the policy would have put athletic scheduling in perspective with respect to the role that athletics play in a student's life.

(At last night's school board meeting, Johnson — a former professional baseball player — reacted to news that the NHIAA's Executive Council had scuttled the proposal by saying, "To kill it out of hand shows me where their priorities are with education.")

"This is a serious effort to get the NHIAA to send a message to schools." Corbin said the association very deliberately uses the term "student-athletes" instead of simply calling them "athletes." "They're students first and athletes second."

Of course, it isn't that the two roles are distinct from one another — there is a strong relationship between participation in athletics and academic success. Said Corbin, a former high school principal, "the busier (students) are the better they do academically." However, this academic success comes in spite of the fact that the student-athletes often miss several hours of class time to travel to games.

This is less of a problem for schools in Class L (the "L" stands for "large), which Corbin said tend to be in the southern third of the state, and which tend to have lights for their fields, which permit later starting times. For smaller schools, however, they often have to travel considerable distances and the facilities tend to depend on sunlight for illumination, which forces early starting times especially as dusk falls increasingly early as the year goes on.

Golf teams tend to spend a lot of time outside of the classroom, Corbin said. Since they play on courses, they depend on the generosity of the course administrators, who permit the students to play in place of paying customers. The NHIAA director said the state is "blessed" to have so many golf courses who open up to the high school teams. Ski teams are similarly at the mercy of ski mountains when scheduling competitions.

"There's no quick, easy answer to this," said McCormack. Speaking specifically about skiing and golf, the Inter-Lakes Superintendent said, "If you have these sports, you have to accept that kids are going to miss school."

Although the policy was not accepted this time around, all interviewed indicated that it was only the beginning of a discussion, during which many ideas were introduced, such as shorter warm-up times, weekend scheduling, and playing games on a neutral field located in between the two competing schools.