Wake schools ease eligibility rules to let more students play sports this fall
Wake County school leaders will temporarily ease athletic eligibility rules in order to allow more high school and middle school students to play sports this fall.
One of the requirements for athletic eligibility in the Wake County school system is that students had to have been in attendance for at least 85% of the previous semester.
But the school board’s policy committee Aug. 31 backed a proposal from district administrators to waive the attendance requirement for athletic participation for the fall semester. The full board approved the change on Sept. 7.
“We want to offer grace and flexibility to students who may have had issues with attendance during the spring semester,” Eric Fitts, Wake’s senior director for middle school programs, told the committee Tuesday.
Wake’s athletic attendance requirement doesn’t make a distinction between excused and unexcused absences. Fitts cited how some students were absent more than 15% of the time last spring if they had to stay home due to COVID-19 quarantines or were unable to connect to online classes.
Athletic teams have had some of the highest numbers of COVID cases in schools in the state.
The board met the two-thirds majority needed to waive policy.
“There’s consensus on the committee that we want to make sure that students are not affected by this unusual year,” said board member Christine Kushner, chairwoman of the policy committee.
Attendance waiver may be extended to spring
There’s no state attendance requirement to play sports. But even if the attendance rule is waived, administrators pointed out that students would still have to meet other district requirements such as maintaining academic eligibility.
Drew Cook, assistant superintendent for academics, said a recommendation on whether to waive the attendance requirement for spring semester sports would be made in November or December. Fitts said they’ll want to monitor conditions such as the impact of COVID outbreaks on schools and athletic teams.
Board member Jim Martin said he’d support a waiver now for the full school year.
“We already know that we’re going to have quarantine challenges this semester because we’ve already had clusters based on a couple of sports teams,” Martin said.
Cook said they don’t want to waive it yet for the full year to avoid discouraging attendance this semester.
This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Wake schools ease eligibility rules to let more students play sports this fall."
