Perhaps the crowds have swelled beyond staffing for the game (high attendance should be a good problem to have - ask any athlete on a swim or track team). The district supported the shift from Saturday afternoon football games to Friday nights. Given the strong community support these receive, perhaps our students and families have earned a greater role in helping develop the components of a policy that involve their attendance at them.Īfter much hullabaloo in the mid-1990s, city councils in Grosse Pointe Farms and Woods approved the addition of permanent lights at our high school football fields. You often see pods of these students, aka “Village rats,” congregating on Kercheval to create their own, largely innocent fun.Īthletic events, particularly football games under the Friday night lights, have become a community “event,” especially for these kids. However, our wonderful bedroom community also has never had a booming nightlife, particularly for our middle school set. He added the district is simply following the protocols of many of its peer districts.įor decades on end, our community has enjoyed the benefits of ultra-safe, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods. Roy Bishop, the district’s deputy superintendent of educational services, told the GP News that while the policy may be considered inconvenient, he said safety should supersede inconvenience. Is this really a valuable use of their time? Is the hope that families give up and not bother attempting approval? Or will requests just get denied wholesale? Otherwise this seems like a burdensome toil. Additionally, private school students cannot attend the events without a parent, per the policy’s language.Įxceptions can be made, the policy says, by the host school’s athletic director with prior approval if there is an adult who will be responsible for the group for the event’s duration.Īthletic directors in our district perform a dual role as assistant principals. Parents can no longer bring their child’s friends along with them. These are reasonable components that align with most policies for college or professional sporting events.Īdditionally, adults’ bags are now subject to being searched and public high school students are required to present a school ID, per the policy, when not accompanied by an adult.īut the policy’s most unwelcome, controversial and inexplicably punitive piece is that non-high school students are banned from entering events without an adult present for the duration of the event. The athletic event policy guidelines ban students from bringing bags into games, bans outside food and drinks and contains a no re-entry policy. The broad explanation of “safety” hardly begins to earn community understanding and buy-in from within one of metro Detroit’s safest suburbs for the last century and a half. Sorry, but barring any compelling, openly communicated impetus for this policy, we just can’t can’t root for this decision. Whether it’s new or just being newly reinforced, it’s a policy that greatly limits the ability of our middle school and private school students from attending public school games, meets and matches with anyone but a parent or guardian. What we didn’t expect to see pivot or change (much like the already-lost Detroit Lions season) is our district’s long-standing athletic attendance policy, doubling down on it in the middle of our fall sports season, accompanied by an administrator’s vague explanation justifying it.Īs Michael Hartt reported in last week’s Grosse Pointe News, the Grosse Pointe Public School System recently expanded a set of attendance guidelines at district sporting events originally instituted last year at Grosse Pointe South High School. When it comes to sporting events, the primary thing we expect to see pivot is a basketball player.
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