Posted on Fri, May. 09, 2008

A Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools advisory panel on Thursday resisted calls to ease eligibility rules for high school athletes, but also rejected several moves that would have aggressively strengthened the standards.

The panelists, in their final meeting, gave Superintendent Peter Gorman their thoughts on tackling the problem of families who lie about their addresses to get students into elite sports programs.

Gorman and his staff had asked the 24-member panel if one solution might be to force all students who change schools to sit out from athletics for a year -- even if they switched because their parents moved to a different school attendance area.

School principals Michael Mathews of Ardrey Kell High and Todd Pipkin of Olympic High's School of International Business and Communication Studies supported the concept. Mathews called it the simplest, most comprehensive way of confronting the problem.

But that drew disagreement from the other panelists. Many said it would punish all families, including those who move simply because they can afford a better neighborhood.

"This is so overly harsh," said Ronald Tomaszewski, a Wachovia senior vice president. "It's going to encourage people to move out of the district."

A few panelists suggested the sit-out rules should be eased, not strengthened. If a student is legally enrolled in a school, they argued, why shouldn't he or she play sports there?

But others said rules are needed to prevent an epidemic of sports-driven school switching.

Gorman convened the panel after an Observer investigation last year found widespread problems. At least 17 players have been dismissed from Charlotte-Mecklenburg teams in recent months; four coaches have resigned or been removed; and at least two high schools have forfeited football seasons.

CMS officials said during Thursday's meeting that they have investigated 175 of the school system's 10,000 high school athletes since November. Of those, 44 were found in violation of eligibility rules.

Gorman said he plans to incorporate the panelists' suggestions in a package of reforms he will unveil next month. Some of the changes require school board approval. Others he can enact himself.

"In most cases, they thought what we were doing already was appropriate," he said. "But they said ratchet up the verification process and put more accountability in, even if it requires parents and students to have to go the extra mile to prove it."

Recommendations

The eligibility panel suggested:

• Keeping the current "sit-out" rule. It says that any high schooler who changes to a new school or program without moving his or her residence must sit out from sports for a year. Exceptions can be allowed for hardship cases, medical situations, or if the new school is the student's home school.

• Keeping eligibility rules that bar students from playing sports if they live with an adult who isn't a parent and doesn't have legal custody. The panel suggests changing that rule, however, so students can play sports if they can document a severe hardship -- such as an illness, incarceration or military service of a parent.

• Allowing rising seniors whose families move to a new high school zone to complete their senior year at their old school and play sports there.

• Applying the current sit-out rules to students who live outside Mecklenburg County but pay tuition to attend school in CMS. The rules currently don't apply to them.