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Should Hawaii’s 5,800 home-schooled students have access to extracurricular activities such as baseball and math club that can only be provided in a school campus setting? 

Right now, Hawaii law says ‘no.’

Despite a growing national trend toward allowing home-schoolers to join in public school extracurriculars, a recent attempt to allow it in Hawaii fell flat. But the debate may come up again in the coming months as the Hawaii State Board of Education considers amending its home-schooling rules.

of the Hawaii Administrative Rules states that home-school parents shall be solely responsible for their children’s “total educational program including athletics and other co-curricular or extra-curricular activities.”

Co-curricular activities are considered part of the curriculum but not the regular course of study. Extracurricular programs include band, football, choir, orchestra, math club and cheerleading, among other things.

The rule means 14-year-old will not be allowed to join his local high school’s wrestling team. And none of the state’s other home-schooled students will have the opportunity to participate in many activities that require a critical mass of students.

The Hawaii Department of Education told Civil Beat that when a student at his or her neighborhood school, the school loses out on the funds it otherwise would receive for that student. The money goes back into the department’s big pool of money and is effectively divided among the department’s remaining students.

“Home-school parents do pay their taxes, but the schools don’t get any portion of their weighted student formula,” said Anna Viggianno, an educational specialist for gifted and talented students in the Office of Curriculum, Instruction and Student Support. “When the students don’t register at their school, they forfeit that money.”

On the other hand, the state’s public charter school students chose not to enroll in their neighborhood schools but get to participate in extracurricular and co-curricular activities at their local traditional public schools. Yet they too forfeited the money that would have been allocated for them at their neighborhood schools.

Some argue that the apparent double-standard exists because public schools don’t have a way to ensure that home-schooled students are making the grades required to participate in athletics and other extracurricular activities. The education department requires home-schoolers to take the Hawaii State Assessment and requires their parents to report grades annually. Many extracurricular activities at public schools require weekly grade check-ins.

The Hawaii State Board of Education could tweak the policy to require a more frequent grade reporting system for home-schoolers, but many Hawaii public school principals have made no secret that they just don’t want home-schoolers on their campuses.

“The principals recently participated in a survey that was generated by a school principal,” Viggianno said. “Ninety-four percent of them voted to keep Chapter 12 the same.”

Equal Access A Growing National Trend

Meanwhile, there is a national trend toward allowing home-schoolers to participate in extracurricular activities at public schools.

Two different reports state that between and states grant home-schoolers equal access to classes or sports. In those cases, home-schooled students must still meet the same eligibility requirements as public school students. And home-schooled extracurricular participants may be required to submit more frequent academic reports than state statutes otherwise require. HSLDA estimated that in states with access laws, between 3 and 5 percent of home-school students take advantage of public school services.

The courts historically have not upheld legal cases for granting home-schoolers equal access rights on Constitutional grounds, according to a report from the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, a nonprofit advocacy organization for home-school families.

Despite that, many state legislatures or boards of education have passed policies that opened public school doors a little wider to admit home-schoolers to extracurricular programs. The cases for doing so include:

• Home-schooling parents pay the same taxes to fund schools that their public school counterparts pay.
• The presence of home-school students can also increase the diversity on campuses during regular and after-school hours.
• It is in the state’s best interests that every student — public, private and home-schooled — receives the best and most well-rounded education available.
• Home-schooling parents are highly involved in their children’s activities and therefore can prove to be fundraising and volunteering assets for extracurricular programs.

Benefits Not Enough To Get Principals’ Support

The benefits for Hawaii schools could be even greater. Including home-schoolers in extracurricular activities could broaden the support base for those programs, said Hawaii State Board of Education member Kim Coco Iwamoto. Student athletes often bring with them an automatic fan base of family and friends, many of whom support fundraising projects and pay admission to attend athletic events.

Despite the potential benefits and despite early support from education board members, a recent attempt at home-school inclusion in Hawaii fell flat.

Former Sen. Norman Sakamoto introduced in January this year proposing amendments to the state’s policy that would make room for home-schoolers. The board voted to support the bill, Iwamoto said, but a legislator observed that the board could make the changes itself without involvement from the Hawaii Legislature. The bill was set aside, and died in committee, while the board worked out its own amendment proposals.

“The proposed amendments would have made it so that home-schooled kids are allowed to participate in extracurricular activities,” Iwamoto said. “As long as they’re in good standing with their school, make the required grades and pay the activity fees — everything traditional (public school) students have to do — they could participate. And by participate, I mean try out for teams. It doesn’t mean they would be guaranteed a spot.”

Many public school parents testified in support of the proposed changes, said Iwamoto. But principals’ overwhelming opposition to the amendments won the day. Many supported excluding home-schooled children, citing their parents’ “conscious choice to exclude their (children) from the public school environment” and increasing expectations of schools despite diminishing resources. (See public testimony: ; .

But Iwamoto said such reasoning is illogical. She pointed out that schools receive special categorical funding that is determined by how many students participate in their athletic programs.

“If they have 10 home-school kids are participating in a sport, they would get a per-pupil allocation for all of those students, regardless of whether they are home-schooled or public schooled,” she explained.

But the education board still rejected the amendments in May this year.

The department recently proposed amendments to Chapter 12 again, this time explicitly requesting the board to avoid changes that would allow home-school student participation.

The board’s Committee on Curriculum, Instruction and Student Support received the proposed amendments at its Nov. 9 meeting, but postponed voting on them pending further review.