Increases to activity participation and admission fees, plus new training for coaches and directors are among the changes being proposed to the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s activity handbook. School board members got their first look at the proposed revisions from the Kenai Peninsula School Activities Association, or KPSAA during a work session last week.
Kenai Middle School Principal Vaughn Dosko also serves as the KPSAA board’s executive secretary. He told school board members that many of the proposed changes are administrative.
“A lot of them are more streamlining our forms and also keeping our KPSAA forms in line or compliance with ASAA,” he said.
ASAA is the Alaska School Activities Association. Locally, KPSAA oversees school sports, like football and basketball, and school activities, like band and choir. Overarching policies cover either elementary, middle or high school students.
This year, KPSAA is proposing to increase elementary activity fees from $15 to $20 per activity, per student. And the board suggests upping admission fees for high school activities. As proposed, adults would pay $10 for general admission, students would pay $3 and the parents of home team participants would pay $3. That’s an increase of two dollars, one dollar and one dollar, respectively.
Middle and high school coaches and directors would also be required to complete mandatory reporting training, although those adults would not become mandatory reporters. All school district volunteers are already required to pass a background check.
“It does expose them to some training that should prevent any abuse towards kids that they might have,” Dosko said.
The board also wants to tweak a rule for middle school basketball games, based on referee input, with the goal of keeping games competitive and sportmanlike. The new rule bars backcourt defense until the second half of the game. If a team is 20 points ahead during the second half of the game, backcourt defense is not permitted. Dosko says the proposed change isn’t popular with basketball die-hards, but provides clarity to referees during the most chaotic half of the game.
Looking ahead, board members also say they’re interested in enacting rules around academic eligibility. Superintendent Clayton Holland says the district’s seen an uptick in student athletes who switch from a brick-and-mortar school to a home-school program to become eligible to participate in school activities.
The district allows participation in school activities and sports by students enrolled in the district’s Connections Homeschool program and through an agreement with the Interior Distance Education Education of Alaska, or IDEA.
“I'm ineligible one week, I now go to a home-school program, and a week later, next eligibility check, no problem, a straight-A student, and I'm back in action,” Holland said. “There's not a waiting period between transferring to different schools before you're eligible again.”
To address that, Dosko said the district could establish an eligibility waiting period when a student switches between school programs. Holland said district staff will draft a proposed policy to bring back to the school board.
For now, the handbook changes have just been proposed; the board will vote them up or down at their meeting next month.
