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Thanks to the Craig Dickinson Act, also dubbed the Tim Tebow law, Florida home educated students have the privilege of participating in extracurricular activities at their zoned public school, at a private school or in a home education cooperative in their area. These options are unique to home educated students since public school students, and at this time, private school students are only eligible to participate in extracurricular activities at the school they attend. Not all private schools will allow home educated student to participate on their sports teams, but most welcome them as a valuable part of the team. Along with this privilege, however, come rules. The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA), which governs all public school and member private school athletic programs, has very rigid and strictly enforced rules. Home educators must know and abide by these rules.
This is the first of a series on pitfalls to avoid if your child wants to participate in athletics. The FHSAA rules allow a student 4 years of athletic eligibility beginning with the 9th grade. The student becomes ineligible at 19 years and 9 months of age. This means it is important to plan athletic decisions very carefully so as not to lose a year of eligibility.
The first pitfall to avoid is changing schools. The Florida law states that a student is “eligible in the school in which he or she first enrolls each school year, or makes himself or herself a candidate for an athletic team by engaging in a practice prior to enrolling in any member school… Subsequent eligibility will be determined and enforced through the organization’s bylaws.”
The FHSAA bylaws are very specific about transfers and recruiting and those rules can be unintentionally and inadvertently violated if a parent or student is uninformed. Even conversations can be deemed recruiting. Students have been ruled ineligible and schools have been fined when it was discovered that a student/parent had a conversation with a friend or even the janitor at the new school. Any information about the new school must come directly from the principal.
Student cannot transfer schools during the school year, unless there is an accompanying change of residency. Therefore, a student cannot play one sport at a school and play a different sport at another school in the same academic year.
Students need to be very careful about changing from a public school to a private school over the summer. While recruiting violations can occur when a public school student change to another public school, it does not occur as often because public school students have to get approval (waivers) from the school district to attend a public school other than their assigned or zoned school. Public to private or private to private changes are more carefully scrutinized.
Areas of greatest concern over recruiting would be if a student changes to a different school over the summer after participating on non-school teams or in off-season sports leagues, or when a coach from the previous school moves to the school where the student changes for the next school year.
It would behoove parents to read the FHSAA rules very carefully whenever a student desires to transfer or change to different school after participating with any FHSAA member school, including a middle or junior high school. The bylaws and policies can be found in the FHSAA Handbook at: www.fhsaa.org under the tab Rules and Publications.
In the next issue we will address the second pitfall which is non-school teams and off season sports leagues.
 Stephen Eppinger is finishing his freshman year playing on the soccer team at Southeastern University. He has been named to the NCCAA II National Championship all-tournament team. Under the Craig Dickinson Act he played soccer four years at Lawton Chiles High School in Tallahassee. In 2008-09 he led his team in goals and assists, was named team MVP and named to the Big Ben First Team. His mother, Rebecca, said, “We owe it all to Brenda and applaud her for her tireless efforts to open the doors of opportunity for home educators.”
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Homeschool Delegate Devin Platt presents his bill in committee during Youth in Government's State Assembly at the capitol in Tallahassee, Florida.