Faking the Grade

Out of curiosity, how many of you have teenagers participating in High School sports? (I’m going to assume at least one person is raising a hand or nodding in parental camaraderie.) Help me out with something; what is your school’s academic eligibility GPA requirement? (Muttering to yourself does me no good – post a comment or fire an email to the Babble Box.)

Yesterday, I had an Ah-ha moment, and not the Oprah-gave-me-a-Volvo kind; more of a crap-someone-stole-my-car kind.

Sitting patiently through my son’s freshman year orientation, one of the glossy power point slides breezed quickly by; a sort of smoke and mirrors approach to the underside of high school athletics. Way, way, way down in the corner, under the happy-smiling field hockey players, on the very last and quickly vanishing slide was this little ditty:

“High School athletes in Our Town USA must maintain a 1.7 GPA in order to participate in team sports.”

1.7! (Curse word of your choice here – or several.) That’s barely a C-! Kissing a D+! Needless to say my son and I had a post-presentation talk about the town expectations versus those of his college tuition paying parents.

Long story short, (which is always a challenge for me), I’m doing a little digging with our Board of Ed, trying to decifer how such an abysmal number came to be, and what measures need to be taken in order for a more respectable GPA to become the new standard.

A little cyber-assistance from my Babble friends - I need comparisons, what is the GPA requirement in your neck of the woods?

UPDATE: 8/26 - Apparently I've poked the sleeping bear with this post! LOTS of feedback hitting the Babble Box! Keep it coming - follow up Babble coming soon!