By Journalist Kennedy Thomason (OSU)
Sen. Grace Wall (ORU) said she wanted to give homeschooled students a shot at public school sports with her bill, the “Inclusive Sport” act.
Homeschooled students will continue to be left on the sidelines.
The “Inclusive Sports” act, ORU-012, failed in the Senate Friday morning. The bill would have allowed homeschooled high school students to participate in public school sports.
Sen. Grace Wall (ORU), who wrote the bill, said she was inspired by her experience as a homeschooled student.
Wall, along with her siblings, were homeschooled throughout their primary education. This meant that they never had the opportunity to play high school sports.
“For myself, I didn’t really care much about sports, but I know my brothers care a lot about sports, and so growing up there weren’t a lot of good options for them,” Wall said.
The bill presented to the Senate was not the bill as Wall wrote it. Several changes that were made in committee did not make it into the bill packet.
Sen. Wesley Hurlbut (OSU) talked with Wall before the bill was presented, and he submitted four amendments that Wall agreed to beforehand.
Yet several senators still felt the bill needed additional amendments.
Sen. Lillie Plane (TU) submitted an amendment to include other extracurricular activities besides sports.
“I do feel that rather than just sports, homeschool students should have the opportunity to take part in extracurricular activities that are not defined as a sport as well,” Plane said. “Whether it be choir, or band or speech and debate, I think all of those things are equally important to what would be considered a physical sport.”
Sen. Sydney White (SE) said the main issue she wanted to be addressed was the penalty.
The bill stated that any school found to not be compliant would lose its government funding.
White said she was concerned the penalty would be too harsh.
“But we know schools are governmentally funded, that’s completely under the government,” White said. “So essentially you would have no school.”
White was in favor of a passed amendment by Hurlbut that reduced the penalty to cut 2% of state-provided funding if the school was found to be not compliant.
Another line of questioning senators wanted clarification on was the requirement it would place on the sports teams.
Wall emphasized during her author’s explanation that homeschooled students would participate in the same tryout process and would not be guaranteed a spot on the team.
White said she wanted to keep the tryout process fair for all students involved.
“As long as it’s a fair round for everyone and they’re not being like, ‘Oh, we have to include this kid because they’re homeschooled and the government requires it,’ I think it should be a good bill,” White said.
Although the bill failed in a 8-10 vote with five abstentions, Wall remained positive about the outcome.
“I feel like everybody brought up really good points about this bill not necessarily doing exactly what I intended it to,” Wall said. “So lots of wise people in this room.”