El Dorado Middle School teacher Blake Vargas and El Dorado High School Principal Shari Hatfield suggested some changes to the extracurricular policy during the USD 490 Board of Education meeting Monday evening.
The committee reviews the policy on a three-year basis. In 2008-09 they looked at fall sports and this year, they reviewed winters sports at the middle school and high school.
At the middle school, they saw a slight increase overall in sports participation in seventh and eighth grade.
There was an increase in seventh grade participation and this year's eighth grade participation was an increase from last year's seventh graders who moved up, although it was down slightly from last year's eighth grade totals.
Moving on to the high school, they saw a decrease in participation compared to the middle school, but Vargas explained a lot of times students will decide to focus on one sport in high school rather than go out for all of them.
By class, the freshmen did increase; sophomores were more than last year's freshmen but not more than last year's sophomore totals; juniors decreased some; and the senior class increased almost 10 percent over last year's seniors. Overall there was about a .3 percent increase in total participation at the high school.
They also reviewed some of the policies for extracurricular activities, including defining what "a student not in good standing" was and what the discipline would be for unsportsmanlike conduct, as well as the consequences for ejection from an activity/contest.
Another change was to the homecoming candidate election procedure.
Their hope was to let more students to run for homecoming royalty so they opened it up so anyone in a competitive program that represents the school will be eligible, rather than just athletes.
All of these policies will be printed in the student handbook.
"I think one of the biggest things we addressed in the committee all year long was that things were not addressed before," said Superintendent Sue Givens. "Things were not clear."
Hatfield agreed.
"As we looked at it, when we were asked a question about something that happened, there just wasn't anything for us to rely back to," she said.
She said it has to be something they can administer on a consistent basis.
"If there's going to be gray area, it's not really a good policy," she added.
The board approved the changes 6-0. BOE President Jim Waugh was absent.
El Dorado, Kan. —
