Homeschool teams can be banned by state?

[nmsciencemom]

Our state activities association in New Mexico just voted to change the bylaws that homeschool teams can no longer participate in activities in which the NMAA member schools do, including Science Olympiad, unless they join up with a member school. Homeschools are not allowed to join this association as they are not accredited schools. Does anyone have any experience with the state being allowed to supercede National rules in banning homeschool teams from the competition? I have fired off emails to the National Committee as well. Just thought this was an independent competition not subject to state law change. We have participated for 12 years, and now they want to change the rules.

[Unome]

I've never heard of this happening before, although states do have significant leeway in setting rules.

[chalker]

I don't profess to be an expert in such matters, but based upon your brief summary, it sounds like you as asking whether a non-profit organization is subject to state laws. The obvious answer is yes, any organization is going to be subject to state laws. There's nothing special about the SO organization from a legal perspective that allows it to ignore anything legal, be it simple traffic laws or complicated educational qualification criteria.

Sounds to me like you need to take this up with your local state elected officials.

[samlan16]

I honestly find this bizarre. Science Olympiad is not governed by GHSA here in Georgia, so I don't know what to say besides that is stupid.

[Unome]

I honestly find this bizarre. Science Olympiad is not governed by GHSA here in Georgia, so I don't know what to say besides that is stupid.

I think NM SO has some kind of partnership with the government there. From the original post, it sounds like they are a subset of another organization.

[chalker]

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.

[brayden box]

I am on a homeschool team. I have never heard of homeschooling teams being banned by state, but there are very strict rules.

[Skystrider]

Wow, that is no fun. Back in 2003-04, when ExCEL was still forming, there were a number of people who were trying to get WSO to change it's policies so that we could not compete. One play they made was an attempt to get WSO to join Washington's version of NMAA. But WSO's board knew that those people were trying to push us out, so they never fell for it. I think the pressure fell off once the team started finishing in the top ten at Nationals.

With that said, I don't think that the New Mexico legislature had SO in mind when they put down that piece of legislation. These laws are about protecting the incredible amount of money that is poured into athletics programs. SO, on the other hand, operates on a shoe string. The members of state boards, the event judges, the vast majority of coaches; all volunteers. Compare this to a big High School's football program. They build stadiums for the program and often have several paid coaches. If a super team started poaching their best players and they started losing, the loss of ticket sales could be an enormous hit to the school's bottom line.

No one pays to watch a Science Olympiad tournament.

from this distance I don't see NMSO's stance on this issue. Their website still says:

Who can participate in Science Olympiad: Any public or private, home school group or charter school with grades 6 through 12 is eligible. Membership is open to all schools and is in no way affected by race, religion, sex, or ethnic origin. Science Olympiad provides for participation two levels.

http://infohost.nmt.edu/~science/olympiad/

If this ban is simply an action by NMAA, and NMSO has not responded to it yet, NMSO may still be willing to find a solution that will work for everyone. There is probably room to work here. Does NMAA really need to regulate all interscholastic activities? Say a celebrity wanted to speak to all the school-aged kids in the state. If he reached out to the schools, and the homeschool groups, and the YMCA, and whoever else, would the NMAA want it's member schools to hold back because of the participation of other groups?"

Finally, if push comes to shove, has your team sent in its registration and payment yet? The registration form on NMSO's website states:

A non-refundable registration fee of $140 must accompany the completed registration form. This registration fee entitles the member school to enter a team of up to 15 students in New Mexico's Regional Science Olympiad competition and one copy of the 2016 Coaches Manual.

http://infohost.nmt.edu/~science/olympi ... egform.pdf

If you haven't, I would send it in, Registered Mail, post-haste.

[asthedeer]

Oh no!! Best of luck; you're a strong "school"!

[johm160]

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, sally@nmact.org

Thanks!
-MJ