Sports and extracurricular activities are continually offered at CHS as a chance for students to have fun, work with a team, and engage in spirited competition.  But this year, the Missouri State High School Athletic Association (MSHSAA) has put in place a new rule which may bar some students from participating in these activities.

Recently, the member schools of MSHSAA voted on a new regulation that will change some students’ eligibility.  The new rule states: ‘Extra’ classes taken beyond the normal school day shall be excluded from all consideration (i.e. credits achieved in the ‘extra classes’ shall not be considered either for or against academic eligibility).
Some Clayton students might remember changes to the eligibility requirements that were made within the past few years.  Namely, the requirement was raised from 2.5 credits per semester to 3.0 credits per semester.  Principal Louise Losos was involved in the original decision to raise the amount of credit.
“The reasoning behind it is the state had just raised their graduation requirement from 22 to 24, and at 2.5 you could be eligible every semester and not graduate on time, which seemed almost educational malpractice,” Losos said. “It just seemed wrong that you could say to a kid, you can play sports every season but not graduate on time.  So we voted to raise it to 3.0.”
MSHSAA executive director Kerwin Urhahn was also involved in the passage of the new rule for eligibility standards in the 2009-2010 school year.
“The increase in academic eligibility standard, By-Law 213, moving from 2.5 units of credit or 70 percent of courses offered, whichever is greater, to the new standard of 3.0 units of credit or 80 percent of courses offered, whichever is greater was voted on and approved in the Spring 2007 Ballot,” Urhahn said.
Member schools vote on new rules for athletic eligibility each year.  The democratic process usually makes sure that schools are aware of all components of the rules they vote on.
“The proposed changes to the MSHSAA Constitution require a two-thirds approval, and By-Law change requires a simple majority,” Urhahn said. “All rule changes are voted on by the member schools… There are 578 member schools and 81 percent of those schools voted on last year’s ballot.”
MSHSAA gave the member schools time to acclimate students to these new requirements, so that no student was left behind in the shift towards more credits.
“It did not go into effect until the 2009-2010 school year to ensure that all students and schools were aware of the change and would not get surprised by the increase,” Urhahn said.
Losos also made efforts to spread the news of the changes in eligibility requirements.
“We were given a full year’s heads-up on it,” Losos said. “We tried to make sure the students knew, and there were still some students who missed it, that you needed to be enrolled in 3.0, and you needed to to have passed the prior semester 3.0.”
However, a few Clayton students were not able to retain their eligibility after the new rule was instituted for the 2009 fall semester.
“We feel really bad about the kids who are ineligible,” Losos said. “I feel horrible.  We have second-semester seniors.”
Losos plans to utilize new computer programs to help catch students who are currently ineligible.
“In the end, we did a lot of education with the students, and we didn’t have enough institutional safety checks in place,” Losos said. “So we’ll be putting those in place.”
Urhahn advises students to be sure to take more than enough classes to satisfy the requirement, even without counting zero-hour classes.
“I would suggest they take at least the minimum requirement during the normal school day to maintain their bona fide student status (for a 7-period day, they would need to be enrolled in at least 6 classes each worth a half a credit),” Urhahn said. “Also, I would make sure those students were aware they had no room for error.  They would have to pass all their classes.”
For the spring semester, Losos and other faculty have already put checks in place which will take into account the jump to 3.0 credits.
“Right now for this semester, we’ve checked all kids’ schedules to make sure they have the 3.0, and we checked all kids who had 3.25 and down, or 3.25 to 3.0, to make sure that… one of those 3.25…wasn’t forensics or jazz band,” Losos said. “We don’t want kids to be ineligible because of a mistake.”
New attendance and enrollment reports will help in the process of screening each student for eligibility.
“Moving forward, because of what happened first semester, we’ve put some new protocols into place that will increase our safety net,” Losos said. “The technology folks at central office have created a report that they can now run… that can tell us students who are enrolled – how many credits are they eligible for.”
Unfortunately, however, some students will probably not be able to participate in sports this semester due to the requirement of 3.0 passed courses.
Additionally, the new rule’s definition of “normal school day” is rather unclear.
“A normal school day is where a school says a student should achieve a minimum number of credits and offers the student the ability to take the corresponding number of classes,” Urhahn said. “Therefore if a school normally has a 1st hour through 7th hour, then the normal school day would be 7 half credits per semester.”
Some students disagree with the new rule and feel that zero hours should be counted towards eligibility.  Elle Jacobs, a junior at CHS, plays tennis and participates in jazz band.  Although she attends jazz band in the early morning, it does not count towards her eligibility.
“It is not fair for MSHSAA not to count zero hour classes for sports because students wake up extra early and still have a 46 minute class period, so zero hour classes should be counted equally as any other class during the day,” Jacobs said.
The member schools voted to eliminate zero hours in the spring of 2009. Losos and the Clayton Athletic Director, Bob Bone, attended a rules meeting after the new rule was voted on.  It was at this meeting that they heard for the first time the details of this new eligibility standard.
“At that time, Mr. Bone and I were made aware that the new rule stated something to the effect that it was 3.0 earned during a regular school day,” Losos said. “They explained, at that time, that that meant zero hours wouldn’t count.  That was the first we had heard of that.”
Since she had not known this was part of the language of the rule, Losos was indignant after the meeting.
“Mr. Bone and I left that meeting rather angry, to be honest, because I fully supported raising it to 3.0, I thought that was completely appropriate, but that the reasoning given for why zero-hour classes wouldn’t count, I felt, was specious, and rather shortsighted,” Losos said.
According to Urhahn, the reason for the new rule was merely a simplification of eligibility requirements for member schools who had complained about too much complexity in the system.
“It was introduced last year due to the increased number of schedules and classes taken by students where administrators had to calculate each student’s academic eligibility on multiple schedules,” Urhahn said. “Many schools have more than 800 students participating in sports and activities that meant they could have 800 different schedules as they worked through the academic eligibility.”
For Clayton students, the new rule has a direct impact on those who take zero-hour courses.
“Jazz band, forensics, lab jazz band, do not meet during the school day at all,” Losos said. “So right now, those will not count towards eligibility.”
Several other member schools from MSHSAA argued that Clayton’s wide, varied course offerings gave students an unfair advantage because their schools weren’t able to offer zero hour courses.  However, Losos disagrees with this reasoning.
“It’s an equity issue because some school districts can’t offer it,” Losos said. “My response is twofold.  One is, they can.  They choose not to because it’s too expensive, or too logistically difficult.”
Losos does acknowledge that Clayton is a unique academic community; in fact, she cites that very fact as the reason why the zero-hour rule should be eliminated.
“We offer classes that other school districts don’t offer,” Losos said. “We offer AP Music Theory.  How many schools in the state  offer AP Music Theory?  My guess is that you could probably count them on two hands.  Certainly far less than a majority of the schools.  Does that mean that we shouldn’t be allowed to count that?”
Other schools have also argued that the students’ option to take eight or even nine classes in one school day is only giving them an opportunity to fail more classes.  Losos counters this argument as well.
“Part of the response is, so we just want to be able to let kids fail more classes,” Losos said. “That’s not it.  If you’re really worried about a failure model, then MSHSAA should pass a rule requiring a minimum GPA to play, or no failures.”
Additionally, Losos recognizes that students who take more classes than are necessary usually do so because they are genuinely interested in the subject, and not because they want the opportunity to fail a class, yet still be eligible for sports.
“Our kids who are taking eight and nine, it’s because they want to get more classes, it’s not about getting more credit,” Losos said.
The zero-hour courses that do not meet at all during the school day aren’t meant for students who are struggling with academics.  In fact, they are enriching academic opportunities.  Furthremore, according to MSHSAA, “Participation in high school activities is a valuable educational experience and should not be looked upon as a reward for academic success.  Students with low academic ability need the educational development provided through participation in activities as much as students with average or above average ability.”
Ability, therefore, should not be the deciding factor in whether a student should be allowed to participate in sports or other MSHSAA activities.
For some students, participating in these other activities is quite significant.  For example, students enrolled in forensics do not receive credit for that class, but many participate in debate tournaments, which is a MSHSAA event.  Junior Sagar Yadama has taken forensics, and is an active participate of the Clayton Speech and Debate team.
“MSHSAA activities are not only sports related but include debate as well as band statewide contests,” Yadama said.  “Thus, this rule not only alienates those that do compete in debate and band, but also devaluates the classes that are not counted. This rule is a twofold malediction on Missouri schools.”
Many students who participate in zero-hour classes, however, are also high-achieving students in general.
“So this isn’t kids who are trying to get by,” Losos said. “The zero-hour classes are not remedial.  These are classes that kids would not be able to take if we had to offer them during the school day.”
Students themselves can attest to the demanding nature of zero-hour classes.  Junior Ian Miller agrees with Losos’ statement, and contends that zero-hour classes are some of the most challenging offered at Clayton.
“Zero hours require just as much, and possibly more, personal drive than classes during the day,” Miller said.  “It takes some serious motivation to sacrifice and hour of sleep every day.  I’d also say there is tangible evidence of the accomplishments made in zero hour classes, and it seems arbitrary and somewhat belittling to exclude them from filling credit requirements.”
Urhahn and Losos met to discuss the new rule, and Losos tried to convince Urhahn and other member schools to see things from Clayton’s perspective.
“We contacted the MSHSAA executive, Kerwin Urhahn, and talked to him,” Losos said. “Because we have an open campus, our kids don’t necessarily have a traditional schedule.  If they don’t need to be in seven classes, sometimes they’re not.  The world that we’re moving towards is pushing schools to be more and more flexible in how kids earn credit.”
The meeting was a success, and Losos cautiously hopes that the “normal school day” part of the eligibility rule might soon change.
“We had a very good conversation,” Losos said. “We sort of made an appeal explaining that some of our kids start early and end late, that we might have kids start at 7:30 but end at 1:30, or start at third hour and go until later.”
In fact, Losos was surprised by the positive response from MSHSAA.
“We’ve heard from the state that they actually listened to our scenarios,” Losos said. “They are looking at language to potentially to state in there that a school can sort of set what is a standard school day, and a kid could go zero to six, two to nine, if we said our day was a seven-period day, so long as it was sort of your standard school day.  That’s still in discussion.”
Urhahn also predicts that MSHSAA may change the rule in the near future.
“I believe there is a good chance that the item will be on the annual ballot to allow schools to establish their normal school day requirements,” Urhahn said.
The horizon may hold changes in the rule, but for now, Losos plans to continue her current strategy by educating the student body as much as possible to make sure there are no mistakes in eligibility requirements.
“I would say I am cautiously optimistic, but we are working this semester as if that’s not going to change,” Losos said. “If we get word, sometime in the spring, then we will rejoice.”
Losos recognizes that had the eligibility requirement been kept at 2.5, the zero-hour issue would not seem to be as big of a problem.
“In all honesty, when the credits were 2.5, the fact that we had this kind of schedule didn’t really matter,” Losos said. “In a seven-period day, you’re unlikely not to be enrolled in 2.5, and if you were, you’re probably a senior, and you have a really light load, and someone would talk to you about that.”
Losos also admits that there are alternative interpretations of the rule, and Clayton could potentially use those alternatives to circumvent the purpose of the rule.  But she also insists that the best way to deal with an eligibility problem is to be honest.
“These are the rules, we are a member, we live by them,” Losos said. “We could ignore the rule, and say, they’ve earned three credits, we interpret it differently…I’d rather have us live by the rules and be upfront about it.”
Should the changes occur, Losos will be much more satisfied with the credit requirements than she is now.
“We will  have moved past it and got a rule that I actually think is appropriate,” Losos said. “You should have to have 3.0 credits to be eligible, and we have many ways for you to gain those 3.0.”