HARRISBURG -- Even though he doesn’t attend his public high school, Nestor Hrycenko of Allentown would love to have the opportunity to score for its soccer team.
But Hrycenko, 16, has been sidelined at Allen High School because the school district’s policy forbids homeschooled students to join extracurricular activities.
“It was hard at first, because I was used to playing [on a local team] every fall, but I had to learn to live with it,” said Hrycenko, one of seven homeschooled children of parents who also were taught at home.
His father, Peter, went to Lehigh County Court to overturn the policy but was denied a temporary injunction in October 2000. The request for a permanent injunction is pending in Lehigh County Court, he said.
He hopes state lawmakers can resolve the issue before his son finishes his schooling. Father and son attended a legislative hearing Wednesday on a House bill that would require school districts to allow homeschoolers to get involved on sports teams and in clubs and other activities.
“When homeschoolers get turned down for equal access because a board doesn’t like it, the families might opt to sell their house and move to a friendly district next door, or they can work for a couple years to unseat unfriendly board members, or they can sit and wait for a change, or they can sue,” Peter Hrycenko told the House Education Committee.
“Meanwhile, the child suffers, divorced from his community activity through no fault of his own.”
The state’s 1988 homeschooling law sets no guidelines for extracurricular activities, so each school district has decided its own policy. A state Department of Education survey during the 1999-2000 school year found that about 46 percent of Pennsylvania’s 501 school districts allow homeschoolers to participate in regular school activities.
Fourteen states nationwide have state laws or policies that give homeschoolers access to public school activities, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va.
School administrators who testified before the Education Committee said the state should not infringe on local districts’ authority to set school policy.
School districts must consider several factors when deciding whether to open extracurricular offerings to homeschoolers, including verifying that those students are adhering to the state’s eligibility requirements for interscholastic sports, said Tim Allwein, legislative director for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
“A philosophical question also arises: Should parents who make a conscious choice to homeschool their children and thus disconnect from the public school system be allowed to avail themselves of district programs in pieces or on a pick-and-choose basis?” Allwein said.