Homeschooler Banned from Spelling Bee
By Mimi Rothschild
Here’s another example of the inability of the public school system to appropriately deal with homeschool students.
A bright homeschooler wanted to participate in a Philadelphia-area homeschool spelling bee and she was declined because the first round of the spelling bee is a “classroom activity” rather than an extracurricular activity.
Is there any reasonable way that the school administration can justify this behavior? What positive outcome can this decision yield? I can see only negatives. I am forced to assume that the school administration doesn’t like to see homeschoolers put their students to shame. The hostility that school administration has shown homeschooling families (especially ones with bright kids) is well documented. When a homeschooler comes into a classroom and shows everyone up it embarrasses teachers and administration. There is no other explanation.
The law says that home-schoolers must be allowed to participate in public-school athletics or in any other activities outlined in Section 511 of the Pennsylvania School Code, a definition that includes “exercises, athletics, or games of any kind, school publications, debating, forensic, dramatic, musical, and other activities related to the school program.”
Meghan, the student in question, says it best: “It’s not right. They should be saying, ‘Fine.’”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had run-ins with public school teachers, guidance counselors, and principles because of situations like this. Now that we have a law designed to prevent this from happening, schools are trying to skirt around the law by arguing over semantics. This is exactly the kind of situation that the law is trying to prevent. The school is actively looking for a way to exclude her rather than include her. It’s not an issue of whether or not they can include her; it’s whether or not they want to.
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