OKLAHOMA CITY - A bill filed for the upcoming legislative session could add extra students to the sports and club rosters at schools across the state.
Authored by Rep. Sean Roberts (R-Hominy), House Bill 4121 would allow students who attend charter schools to participate in extracurricular activities offered by their local public school district so long as they meet that district’s academic and residential eligibility criteria.
It also would eliminate a section of the Oklahoma Charter School Act that explicitly deems students enrolled at an online charter school as ineligible to participate in activities administered by the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activities Association.
As worded, the measure would extend to students both at online charter schools, such as Epic, and brick-and-mortar charter schools, such as Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences or ASTEC Charter in Oklahoma City.
However, it does not provide any guidance as to how those students would be counted for the enrollment-based system used by the OSSAA to determine classifications. It also does not include any provisions for the would-be receiving school to cover the costs associated with taking on extra students only for clubs and OSSAA-sanctioned activities.
Rep. Roberts could not be reached for comment.
Similar legislation was filed with the state Senate in 2017, but failed at the committee level, in part over concerns it created unfunded mandates for receiving school districts, as well as questions about verifying students’ academic and attendance eligibility.
On Friday, OSSAA Executive Director David Jackson said his organization has not had any conversations about the legislation with either its author or representatives from any of the state’s virtual charter schools. The OSSAA has 480 member schools, including several brick-and-mortar charters in the Tulsa and Oklahoma City metro areas.
“We’re going to represent our membership and our member schools,” Jackson said. “I don’t think their feelings have changed on this since the last time in that there is no interest in allowing that for various reasons.”
“It’s not necessarily an anti-virtual charter school thing. Schools that have students participate for them and put on their uniforms like to have a bit of a relationship with those students. Instead of me just seeing you at 3 o’clock each day, we want to have a more developed relationship with those students.”
OSSAA policies do allow for neighboring school districts to field a co-op team in an activity with students from both sites.
The blended team’s classification is based on the combined average daily attendance at the two schools.
For example, Elgin High School is currently classified as Class 4A for most OSSAA-sanctioned activities based on its attendance figures, while neighboring Boone-Apache floats between Class 2A and Class A. If the two were to have a single shared team for an OSSAA-sanctioned extracurricular, their combined average daily attendance would have that squad competing in Class 5A, OSSAA’s second-largest classification.
Jackson acknowledged that online charters could make the argument that their boundaries span the entire state but said the burgeoning enrollment numbers at Epic One-on-One and Epic’s blended learning sites in Oklahoma and Tulsa counties would pose a classification logistics problem, particularly for smaller sites.
The blended learning sites alone are the state’s 14th largest school district. Epic’s student count among the state’s other 75 counties is the state’s sixth-largest school district, trailing only Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Edmond, Moore, and Broken Arrow.
“Epic has an enrollment of thousands,” Jackson said. “Somehow, I don’t think a school like Fort Cobb is going to want to compete in 6A baseball in order to co-op with them.”
In an emailed statement, Epic spokeswoman Shelly Hickman indicated that the online charter school was supportive of allowing its students to pursue extracurriculars through other avenues.
“We believe as a matter of public policy Oklahoma students in public schools should have equal access to participate in the same extracurricular activities,” she said. “As it stands now, kids attending charter schools such as ours aren’t allowed to participate in most extracurricular activities other public school students are, whether those teams are organized by our school or the school of their residence. Clearly, change is in order.”