After three years of middle school athletes being required to stay home, they\u2019re now allowed to travel.<\/p>\n
A 6-1 vote at Tuesday\u2019s Juneau School District meeting ended the travel ban imposed on middle school athletics, effective immediately. School District Superintendent Mark Miller said the board members were reflecting what they\u2019ve heard from the public with this decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think every board member had their own reasons,\u201d Miller said. \u201cOne of the reasons many of them had was they got an earful when they were running for office the past three years about it, from members of the community who feel very strongly that it should never have been implemented in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea of fairness has been at the center of this issue. Back in September 2013, when the board approved the ban, the issue stemmed from the fact that Floyd Dryden Middle School teams were traveling and Dzanktik\u2019i Heeni Middle School teams were not. The ban went into effect prior to the 2014 school year, not allowing teams to travel or even to fundraise for travel.<\/p>\n
The idea that swayed the members of the board this year was also about equity. Academic middle school organizations have still been allowed to travel in recent years while athletic teams have had to stay at home. Now, all will be able to travel. Teams had always had to fund their own travel independent of the school, and will now once again raise money on their own.<\/p>\n
Board of Education President Brian Holst said he doesn\u2019t expect teams to travel until next season, and that the board still has some work to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s left to the superintendent to work out the administrative regulations to implement the policy,\u201d Holst said. \u201cThey have work to do that they\u2019ll start now and I imagine that they\u2019ll be able to arrive at guidelines that they\u2019ll share with the board but it\u2019s really left up to the super to decide not if it\u2019s allowed, but given that it is allowed, how middle school athletic travel happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller said he expects to work through the end of the school year and throughout the summer working out the details of how travel will work. He said they\u2019ll work together to figure out how to \u201cavoid the pitfalls in the issues\u201d when the ban was put in place.<\/p>\n
The school board that approved the ban was worried about both the financial burden on families and the academic challenges that athletic travel posed. Families were forced to pay for travel, teams were forced to raise funds and students and teachers both missed class. Those are still concerns, as the sole dissenting voter and Vice President Andi Story asserted during the meeting.<\/p>\n
Though the details have yet to be worked out, the travel schedule will likely return to the one that was in place prior to the ban, Holst said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re in middle school, not every team would travel every year historically,\u201d Holst said. \u201cSome teams would travel each year, other teams would travel maybe every other year, and there\u2019s always been an effort to minimize class absence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advocates of athletic travel range from middle school students to local government figures. City and Borough of Juneau Assembly member Debbie White has been outspoken about the ban since its genesis, and was \u201cso happy\u201d to hear the news Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is absolutely essential for those young people with athletic ability and inclination to pursue a higher level in their sports careers,\u201d White said. \u201cIt opens a lot of opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com or 523-2271.<\/b><\/p>\n
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After three years of middle school athletes being required to stay home, they\u2019re now allowed to travel. A 6-1 vote at Tuesday\u2019s Juneau School District meeting ended the travel ban imposed on middle school athletics, effective immediately. School District Superintendent Mark Miller said the board members were reflecting what they\u2019ve heard from the public with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":428,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-31009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/428"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31009"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=31009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}