By PAUL GRAHAMMy son joined the Jemez Mountain Homeschool Speech and Debate Team this year and I have been surprised by the drama surrounding our team’s participation at speech and debate events in the state even though the team has successfully participated for more than 15 years.
In September, when the team’s participation was first blocked, it became clear that homeschool student teams were treated very differently from other teams. At the time, the New Mexico Activities Association (NMAA) Handbook stated that homeschool students could participate, but could not win any state-level awards as a team.
Why discriminate in this way? Why shouldn’t homeschool teams be allowed to compete?
While these limitations seemed very strange for an institution that claims to promote “equitable participation and character development”, things have only gotten worse.
Apparently around the time I read the NMAA Handbook, it was being revised. The NMAA Handbook now reads that homeschoolers can only participate in activities with their local public school and not as a homeschool team. That does not sound necessarily like “equitable participation” to me, especially considering the well established and highly active team that Jemez Mountain has had for years.
What does excluding homeschool teams accomplish?
The claim is that the rule changes were to bring the NMAA rules in better alignment with state law, though, that reinterpretation is debatable. Further, I would claim that, if this is what state law really intends, it is in dire need of being revised to be more inclusive.
As you may know, the Albuquerque Area Home Schoolers Science Olympiad Team was also affected by the NMAA’s sudden change in interpretation and enforcement after participating for about a decade.
To their benefit, they took their plight to the Albuquerque media and have apparently received some sort of agreement with the NMAA so they can participate for the rest of the year, though, the agreement’s terms are not publicly known.
Meanwhile, Carolyn Connor, the Jemez Mountain Team’s long-time coach, has been going through the far-from-timely appeals processes with the NMAA and the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED). The NMAA’s ruling was about 30 days late and the NMAA has yet to meet with the team to discuss their ruling.
Likewise, the NMPED is more than 60 days late with their ruling on the team’s NMPED appeal.
All of this has happened despite the support of several of the state’s speech and debate teams and the efforts by State Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard and Los Alamos Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Kurt Steinhaus, to engage the NMAA to allow the Jemez Mountain Team to participate as a homeschool team.
Of course, those affected the most are the team’s young women and men. The Jemez Mountain Team has only been able to fully participate in two in-state events, was partially allowed to participate in another, and has been rejected or otherwise pressured to withdraw from at least six other in-state events.
The team has had to go to more out-of-state events, usually, with only a fraction of the team due to the distance and expense. To add insult to injury, the problems with the NMAA are also putting in jeopardy the team’s recognition and ability to participate at the national level.
I write this knowing that time is running out for the team to be able to participate in state this season and hoping that shedding a little light on this subject might help the team’s chances to participate for the rest of the season and in the future.
In the long term, I believe the state would benefit from better rules and laws that encourage interaction between public schools and homeschoolers as individuals and as homeschool teams rather than depending on the whims of legal interpretation, special exceptions, and laws that are behind the times.