GPA rule sidelines more than 100 athletes
GREENSBORO — At least 111 student-athletes who failed to attain a 2.0 grade-point average in the spring semester are ineligible to play for their high school teams this semester because of a new requirement instituted by Guilford County Schools.
District officials agree it is likely they have more ineligible athletes because totals are estimated by coaches and are reported by each school’s athletics director.
The figures also don’t include students who are ineligible because they failed more than one class, students who didn’t try out because their grades wouldn’t have qualified, or students who transferred or dropped out.
“We’re trying to figure out how to track it,” said Leigh Hebbard, athletics director for Guilford County Schools. “There isn’t an easy answer just yet.”
Each of the district’s 15 high schools with athletics programs has reported at least one ineligible student as a result of the policy for fall teams. The district’s total does not include athletes on winter teams, whose seasons will begin in November with about two months remaining in the first semester.
Ineligible athletes cannot participate in practices or games, though they can be a manager or statistician, Hebbard said.
The effects of the policy vary across the district:
• Northeast Guilford, whose 21 ineligible students are the most reported, lost 19 football players.
• The Page football team lost two of its starting offensive linemen (plus a third who failed more than one class and a fourth who transferred) and a starting junior varsity running back.
• A Smith student who has played basketball since he was 6 will miss the first two months of his senior season.
“Now he can’t play because he needed another two points on a test?” said the Smith student’s parent, Kenneth Whitmire, who also spoke before the Guilford County Board of Education and said that his son, who passed all of his classes, cried for several days and spent long hours in bed, depressed. “He was due to be a starter this year, captain of the team.”
Stronger requirements
Guilford County’s policy is stricter than the state’s eligibility requirements. The N.C. High School Athletic Association requires no minimum GPA, stipulating only that a student must pass three of four classes in a block schedule or five of six classes in a traditional schedule to remain eligible.
But Guilford’s policy is on par with the 2.0 required in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County systems.
“Our superintendent (Maurice Green ) came on board (in 2008), and promoting academic excellence was one of his focal points,” Hebbard said. “The standard of only passing three or passing five classes didn’t stand for promoting excellence in any shape or form, and the 2.0 requirement is a step in the right direction.”
But one football coach, Northeast Guilford’s Tommy Pursley, touts the benefits that students receive when they play sports.
“We lost kids who needed us more than we needed them,” Pursley said. “Participating in sports helps with discipline and self-control and to keep them out of trouble. We’re not out here just teaching these kids some silly game.
There’s a value in what we do and sometimes those people making decisions and setting policy don’t understand that or don’t appreciate … the effect we have on these kids.”
Northern Guilford football coach Johnny Roscoe said the GPA requirement didn’t cause his team to lose players, but he said some were ineligible after failing two classes.
“I don’t see a problem with it,” Roscoe said. “Everybody plays by the same rules, so that’s what you have to go by. There’s people that fall and have to suffer the consequences.”
The school district adopted the 2.0 GPA, based on a weighted scale to account for honors and advanced classes, in August 2009. The district phased in the policy by requiring no GPA for athletes during last year’s fall semester and a 1.5 GPA for participation in the spring.
The 2.0 requirement does not apply to freshmen, who are offered an adjustment period and need a 1.5 average to remain eligible for the second semester.
“Our young athletes are capable young men and women. They have the ability,” said Nancy Routh, a member of the Guilford County Board of Education and chairwoman of the governance committee. “If they start viewing themselves as being capable of achieving whatever the expectation is for the classes they’re taking first, and athletes second, that would be my hope.”
Page football coach Kevin Gillespie added: “Hopefully it’ll serve as a message to them for what they have to do, and they’ll get eligible for next year.”
Keeping track
Guilford County Schools puts the onus on students and parents to be aware of grades and academic eligibility.
“Our teachers do a lot of after-school help sessions with their students,” Hebbard said. “Some schools may have a formal tutoring program, some are more informal, but (the students) have to go to the teacher where they need help.”
The district issues report cards four times a year and progress reports in between.
“It gives you the opportunity to, if you think there’s a mistake, you can go back to your teacher who is responsible for the grade and say, 'I thought I had this or I thought I did that that counted,’” Routh said. “It’s a way of checking and verifying the progress that you’re making.”
Guilford County Schools is also launching an online progress report called Parent Assistant, being piloted in about a dozen schools this fall.
Hebbard said adults should point students toward help and monitor their progress.
“You’ve got to stay in touch with that student, even though he’s not on the team,” Hebbard said. “Check on the progress reports. You have to keep an eye on those kids, and the ones who are on the team right now. You’re playing football now, but your football for next year is going to be based on how they’re doing in the spring.”
A misconception shared among some parents and coaches who spoke with the News & Record is that students receiving D’s would be better off failing so they could retake the course in the summer.
“You can take the course over again in order to pass it, but the F will still be on your record and it will still factor into your GPA,” Guilford County Schools chief of staff Nora Carr said. “One doesn’t replace the other.”
Hebbard said he’s aware of only one complaint — from the Smith student’s parent to the school board during a public comments session — but there is no process to formally appeal academic ineligibility.
“There are reams of material about the fact that athletics are not part of a fundamental education,” said attorney Jill Wilson, general counsel for Guilford County Schools. “There is no constitutional right to play sports … or to participate in any other extracurricular activities. A court could look at whether the school has established a rational basis for its guidelines, but the basis of a minimum GPA is obvious.”
Contact Jason Wolf at 373-7034 or jason.wolf@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Related Links
Search News-Record.com
closeSearch News & Record Article Archives
Not all of the newspaper's content appears online.
*There is a fee for downloading some older articles.
