Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

For anything Science Olympiad-related that might not fall under a specific event or competition.
User avatar
samlan16
Member
Member
Posts: 528
Joined: December 30th, 2013, 2:54 pm
Division: Grad
State: GA
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 5 times
Contact:

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by samlan16 »

johm160 wrote:Hello everybody,
A home school team in Albuquerque, NM is appealing the decision by the NMAA. If you're on a home school team from another state, or just love science olympiad and feel that all students should be able to compete, consider writing an email (or letter) to the NMAA. The Albuquerque Home Schoolers' site (http://www.sciolyaahs.com) has some details, but basically the emails are going to the executive director of the NMAA, Sally Marquez, [email protected]

Thanks!
-MJ
I'm reading through the minutes from the last meeting, and they don't allow you all to place? Is this something we should pursue as well?
NMAA Bylaws wrote:C. A home school student who participates on a home school team is not eligible for state awards.
D. A home school team, although eligible to participate in state competitions, is ineligible to compete
for state awards.
Old fart who sort of did things sort of for some schools.
aahs_so
Member
Member
Posts: 12
Joined: February 5th, 2014, 6:51 pm
Division: Grad
State: NM
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by aahs_so »

Update: NMAA allowed us to compete this year and both our mid-school and high school teams won.

The NM Public Education Department ruled in a separate case that the NMAA could not stop a home school team from competing if they had allowed them in the past. This would certainly apply in our situation as well. The NM PED also ruled that the bylaw change that eliminated the possibility of home school teams competing was invalid since they did not get approval for those bylaw changes. Likely the fight is not over, but for this year we are on to nationals.
AAHS Event Coach
User avatar
rfscoach
Coach
Coach
Posts: 604
Joined: July 7th, 2008, 4:58 pm
Division: B
State: GA
Has thanked: 4 times
Been thanked: 9 times

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by rfscoach »

aahs_so wrote:Update: NMAA allowed us to compete this year and both our mid-school and high school teams won.

The NM Public Education Department ruled in a separate case that the NMAA could not stop a home school team from competing if they had allowed them in the past. This would certainly apply in our situation as well. The NM PED also ruled that the bylaw change that eliminated the possibility of home school teams competing was invalid since they did not get approval for those bylaw changes. Likely the fight is not over, but for this year we are on to nationals.
Congratulations!
I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.
User avatar
samlan16
Member
Member
Posts: 528
Joined: December 30th, 2013, 2:54 pm
Division: Grad
State: GA
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 5 times
Contact:

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by samlan16 »

rfscoach wrote:
aahs_so wrote:Update: NMAA allowed us to compete this year and both our mid-school and high school teams won.

The NM Public Education Department ruled in a separate case that the NMAA could not stop a home school team from competing if they had allowed them in the past. This would certainly apply in our situation as well. The NM PED also ruled that the bylaw change that eliminated the possibility of home school teams competing was invalid since they did not get approval for those bylaw changes. Likely the fight is not over, but for this year we are on to nationals.
Congratulations!
Yay! Congratulations for winning state!
Old fart who sort of did things sort of for some schools.
User avatar
asthedeer
Member
Member
Posts: 56
Joined: November 5th, 2013, 6:04 am
Division: C
State: MD
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0
Contact:

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by asthedeer »

aahs_so wrote:Update: NMAA allowed us to compete this year and both our mid-school and high school teams won.

The NM Public Education Department ruled in a separate case that the NMAA could not stop a home school team from competing if they had allowed them in the past. This would certainly apply in our situation as well. The NM PED also ruled that the bylaw change that eliminated the possibility of home school teams competing was invalid since they did not get approval for those bylaw changes. Likely the fight is not over, but for this year we are on to nationals.
Hurrah!! Congrats!!
Pilgrimage Homeschool Science Olympiad 2017!!!
Anatomy, ExD, Rocks and Minerals, Helicopters.

Check out my blog!
rockandminerals4him.wordpress.com

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
~God, Jeremiah 29:11
hscmom
Coach
Coach
Posts: 250
Joined: March 3rd, 2010, 8:41 pm
Division: Grad
State: CO
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by hscmom »

Wow, wow! Just reading this now. Thanks for the update and congrats.
Homeschool Science Colorado since August 2008
sciolymom
Member
Member
Posts: 45
Joined: May 3rd, 2013, 1:06 pm
Division: C
State: CO
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by sciolymom »

Congratulations and keep up the fight!
Mom/Event Coach
nmsciencemom
Member
Member
Posts: 15
Joined: January 12th, 2011, 7:53 pm
Division: C
State: NM
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by nmsciencemom »

chalker wrote:I've done a little research into this and have a bit better understanding of the situation.

According to the NMAA website, "private/non-profit organization whose principle purpose is the regulation, direction, administration and supervision of interscholastic activities in the State of New Mexico"... "comprised of New Mexico public, private and parochial middle/junior high and senior high schools that pay membership dues on an annual basis" (http://www.nmact.org/about-nmaa).

Science Olympiad is listed as an official NMAA activity (http://www.nmact.org/science-olympiad) based out of New Mexico Tech. It is NOT part of NMAA, just 'sanctioned' by them as an allowable activity.

The bylaw change you refer to was to remove certain references to Home School eligibility (see page 3 of http://www.nmact.org/file/Results_092515.pdf) in order to abide by State laws. The resulting language states: "As per New Mexico State Legislation, home school students are permitted to participate in NMAA activities ONLY at the public school in the attendance zone in which they live" (see page 3 of http://www.nmact.org/file/Section_8.pdf)

The crux of this appears to be as follows: the schools in New Mexico have decided to voluntarily join together in an organization (NMAA) to regulate interscholastic activities amongst themselves. The New Mexico State Legislature has passed a law requiring home school students participating in these regulated activities to join the team of their local public school.

New Mexico Science Olympiad is not legally obligated to abide by these rules, however in all likelihood if they don't NMAA will declare them to no longer be a sanctioned activity. As a result, the majority of the member schools will prevent students / teachers from forming SO teams or participating in the tournaments. Thus NMSO would end up effectively just consisting of home school / private teams, which would be a significant decrease from the 100+ teams that currently participate.

NMSO is between the proverbial rock and a hard place here, and the obvious answer is to do what benefits the majority of the participants - which is to abide by the NMAA requirements. Note they aren't LEGALLY obligated to do this. While the National Science Olympiad does have a home school policy, the state organizations have quite a bit of autonomy. And while this decision goes against the NSO Home School Policy, I suspect NSO would support the NMSO decision as the 'lesser of 2 evils'. It's doubtful they would want to intervene in any way in this situation.

Hence I think my original advice still remains - you should take this up with your local state officials. You also might want to see if you can work out any arrangements with the local public schools to form a hybrid team of some sort.

Sorry that you are in this situation, as I wish every student that wanted to participate in SO had no obstacles to doing do.
Just a late note on this comment about hybrid: As per the amended National SO rules in about 2011 I think it was, we can only participate as individual home schoolers on our public school teams of the public school district we are in. This would work only for 7 of the 30 kids involved. The rest would have no way to participate in Science Olympiad, as we also cannot join a private school team. Charter schools are a little iffy, as theoretically the district of any public charter school is the entire state, as recently mediated during a sports activity dispute with the NMAA and a home schooler participating with a charter school's sport. The NMAA is completely disinterested in letting us be full members (we tried again this fall), and we were unable to get a state law clarification last year that had the support of both House and Senate due to running out of time. They are letting us participate for now, but not sure any new Science Olympiad team would be allowed to. They are afraid home school sports teams would again try to be allowed to participate against public schools, and they are REALLY against that. They have nothing to do with running Science Olympiad, they only give some money for awards, but the university does not want to lose that. The NMAA offers no rationale for banning home school teams, once their claim of state law was disproved by litigation. We may try getting the law passed next long session, if the debate team also involved is interested.
User avatar
MissAmargasaurus
Member
Member
Posts: 39
Joined: November 2nd, 2017, 8:18 am
Division: Grad
State: ID
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0
Contact:

Re: Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

Post by MissAmargasaurus »

What's happening in New Mexico sounds cruddy as pigeon, I really hope the homeschool teams there are able to compete. I'm really sorry that's happening, especially coming from a homeschool team myself that has also consistently placed very high. What they're doing is unfair and I hope everything ends up okay!
2016-17: Expd, Invasive Species, Wind Power, Forenics
2017-18: Expd, Ecology, Herp
2018-19: Expd, Fossils, Herp, Wright Stuff
2019-20: Expd, Fossils, Ornith, Wright Stuff

TVHSOT captain of 2019-20. Finding your passion in events is the road to victory! I love ancient creatures & rocks. <3
Post Reply

Return to “General Competition”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: cookieclickeraz and 1 guest