Middletown Homeschoolers Meet With BOE Thursday On Sports Team Request (2024)

Schools

A request to let homeschool kids try out for school sports teams has split the Middletown Board of Education:

Posted Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 4:00 pm ET|Updated Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 8:53 am ET

Homeschool parents attended the Tuesday night Middletown school board meeting (watch it here), where they asked the board — for the third time — to let their kids try out for public school sports teams and clubs.

Belinda Rooney is one of those parents. Rooney homeschools her two sons, and she's been trying for the past six months to let homeschool kids have access to Middletown school district teams and clubs.

Meeting on this scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday

According to Rooney, BOE vice president Jacqueline Tobacco invited the homeschool parents to attend the Board's next policy committee meeting, where the issue will be discussed. That meeting will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 19.

Rooney said there will be three homeschool parents there, including herself.

Rooney said she is grateful to attend Thursday's meeting. However, she also said it's her understanding that the Board won't give a public answer or take a vote on the issue until the next BOE meeting, scheduled for Nov. 20.

"It appears we won't get an official answer now until Nov. 20 — and that is disappointing," Rooney said publicly at Tuesday night's meeting.

The Middletown school board is split on homeschoolers' request

"We know the board members who are for us; we know who is for this cause," she told Patch Wednesday, and she listed Joe Fitzgerald, Barry Heffernan, Deb Wright and Gary Tulp as all in support of their request.

"And these are Board members who have no stake in our cause," she added. "They don't have homeschool children. They are supporting this because it's the right thing to do for the community. So we are just very eager to understand what the rest of the board believes. The rest are a big question mark."

Rooney's request was discussed this summer in the Board's co-curriculum committee: Fitzgerald previously told Patch he and Heffernan both voted to move the suggestion out of committee and bring it before the board for a full vote. However, there needs to be a majority (3 out of 4) to bring a request out of committee; board members Leonora Caminiti and Joan Minnuies appear to have voted against bringing it out of committee.

They never responded to this Patch reporter when asked why.

Then at the August BOE meeting, Tulp tried to bring up the request for an immediate vote by the full board, but he was told that is not the procedure.

Rooney may have four BOE members who back her cause. However, she needs to get a majority on the nine-member Middletown school board. Alternately, superintendent Jessica Alfone could also directly introduce the proposal as a superintendent's recommendation to the board. But the fact that she has failed to do that indicates she does not support the idea, either.

It is no secret that the Middletown school district would like to increase its student enrollment. Middletown has been seeing a drop in enrollment over the past five years, dating back to even before the pandemic, which in turn results in aid reductions from Trenton. When schools were virtual during the pandemic, some Middletown parents chose to homeschool their kids, or chose private or Catholic schools. Many have simply never returned to the public school district.

Rooney said she does not have a number on how many Middletown families homeschool. She also stressed that not all homeschool kids want to compete in school sports, and she also said it does not have to go into effect right away.

"It's not even that many families; we're a small pool," she said Wednesday. "And I know for a fact that Brick and Holmdel school districts allow this (homeschool kids to play on sports teams)."

Stay tuned to see what will transpire in Thursday's 10 a.m. meeting. Tobacco, Tulp, Frank Capone and Kate Farley sit on the policy committee.

"We are eager to understand where everyone stands, and ultimately what the decision is," said Rooney. "We just want some kind of answer."

Prior on this topic: Middletown Home School Parents: Let Our Kids Play School Sports (Aug. 31)

Parents Say Middletown Won't Let Homeschooled Kids Join Sports Teams (Aug. 10)