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State Supreme Court To Hear Homeschool Sports Participation Appeal In April
The State
Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing for the appeal of the Jones case on April
5 in Parkersburg. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.
Last
summer, the WV Department of Education (WVDE) and the WV Secondary Schools
Activities Commission (WVSSAC) filed an appeal of the September 2003 ruling in
the Jones case. That ruling, made by Kanawha County Circuit Judge Duke Bloom,
permitted Mannington homeschooler Aaron Jones to join his local middle
school’s wrestling team; Judge Bloom also ordered the SSAC to develop fair
rules to allow all homeschooled students to participate in the sports programs
at their area public secondary schools.
Though the SSAC did not develop rules for homeschooled students’
participation, some homeschoolers followed in Aaron Jones’s footsteps and
sought the chance to try out for their local school sports teams. Initially, the
SSAC and the WVDE tried to block the few new homeschooler forays into the school
sports arena, but lawsuits filed by two Summers County families late last August
made the state organizations rethink this strategy. The WVDE and the SSAC
decided that they didn’t want to litigate numerous lawsuits filed by
homeschooling families, and they agreed to allow homeschoolers to play on school
sports teams until the Supreme Court decides the case.
The April 5 Supreme Court hearing will be part of this year’s Legal
Advancement for West Virginia Students (LAWS) project. LAWS is “a West
Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals initiative designed to educate high school
students about the judicial branch of government. Participating students have a
unique opportunity to attend a Supreme Court session in their own, or a nearby,
community.” (See below for more information about the 2005 LAWS program.)
Argument
Webcast
The April 5 hearing
will take place at the Parkersburg City Building at 1 Government Square. Seating
is limited, as is parking. However, those with Internet access can view the
court session via the Supreme Court’s Argument Webcast. Every State Supreme
Court oral argument session is “webstreamed” in real time on Webcast, and
you can try it out before April 5, any time the court is in session. See the
court calendar for the next court session http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca/calendar/calendar.htm.
For more information on Argument Webcast, visit http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca/Webcast.htm.
Asked about when the court might issue a decision in the Jones case, the
court’s information services director, Michelle Mensore, said that LAWS cases
are usually decided before the school year ends so that the students involved in
the program can meet to discuss the outcomes. However, if for some reason the
Supreme Court misses this deadline, Ms. Mensore explained, an opinion should be
issued before the court term ends in early July.
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Jones
Brief Available Online Through LAWS Project
The
2005 LAWS student materials will be available at http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca/student.htm
after February 9. Briefs for the 2005 LAWS cases, including the Jones case,
will also be online; check the argument docket http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca/calendar/april05.htm
closer to April 5 for links to pages with those materials.
If you live in Wood or Wirt County and your high school age child is
interested in the 2005 LAWS project, s/he may be able to participate. To prepare
for the day in court, students review the case summaries, read about the
state’s court system, and meet with a local volunteer attorney ahead of time.
A teacher in-service training for the program will be held February 9. Following
oral arguments for each case, the students attend a “debriefing” session
with the attorneys involved in the case assigned to their group.
Tara Settle, a homeschooling parent in Parkersburg, is working with the
LAWS project contact, Michelle Mensore, to involve Wood and Wirt county
homeschoolers in this year’s program (the program is limited to students in
these two counties). The April 5 Supreme Court session will include several
other cases in addition to the Jones case; the cases are divided among the
groups of students, one case for each group. Ms. Mensore cautions that students
cannot choose their case assignment. To find out more about the 2005 LAWS
program for homeschoolers, call or email Tara Settle (428-8565; tsettle3@charter.net).
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WVHEA ——
The Next Step for School Sports Participation Advocates
No
matter how the State Supreme Court decides the Jones case, Randy Minor, attorney
for the Jones family, believes that it’s unlikely that will be the end of the
homeschooler-school sports issue. As he wrote in the November WVHEA Report,
if the Supreme Court upholds Judge Bloom’s decision in favor of homeschoolers,
the SSAC and WVDE will move their fight to the legislative arena, seeking a
change in the law that would nullify any court decision against them. The
scheduling of the Supreme Court hearing five days before the end of this
year’s legislative session may make passage of adverse legislation less
likely--but not impossible--this year.
If the court decides against the Joneses, then homeschoolers who advocate
participation in school sports may want to push for a change in the law. Any
citizen on any side of an issue can at any time ask a legislator to draft and
introduce a bill. Advocates of homeschooler participation in school sports
should be speaking to legislators right now to discuss the issue and gauge their
support. If no legislation is introduced during the regular session, the
discussion can be continued during interims (meetings for legislators between
sessions), and if necessary a bill could be ready to be introduced in the 2006
regular session.
WVHEA's role in any legislative effort depends on several factors. As a
registered nonprofit organization, it is prohibited from using more than a small
percentage of its resources in "lobbying." In addition, WVHEA's
constitution does not include lobbying legislatures as part of its mission;
rather, its purposes include "To monitor the government with respect to
home education issues," "To engage in non-partisan research and
analysis of issues affecting home education," and "To review and
disseminate information considered vital to home educators." WVHEA and its
legislative committee base their activity on these principles and try to assist
members in legislative activity they wish to pursue as individual citizens.
WVHEA can help by identifying people interested in this issue, helping
them network with each other, and sharing our legislative experience with them
so that they can accomplish their goals.
We received only 5 responses to a survey form printed in last
November’s newsletter designed to assess the level of interest in this issue
among our membership. Because we have learned that this method is not the best
way to assess interest, we are currently trying to survey a random sample of
WVHEA members by phone. WVHEA volunteers are conducting the survey.
Participation is voluntary. If you would like to help with the survey, please
call or email Janine Breyel (800-736-9843; jbreyel@excite.com).
You can also submit a survey form online at http://wvhea.org/sports_survey.htm.
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WVHEA ——