The Baltimore school board is considering requiring students to maintain a GPA of at least a 1.75, or a C-, in order to play on an interscholastic sports team.
The policy, which would take effect in the 2017-2018 school year, would establish the first minimum GPA for athletic participation in the city. The minimum would be raised to 2.0, or a C, for 2018-2019.
Some said 1.75 is an unacceptably low standard that would set low expectations.
"If it was up to me, it would be 2.0 immediately," said City Councilman Brandon Scott, who has advocated for increased standards for student-athletes in the city. "Allowing them to play with a 1-point-anything allows coaches and schools to use kids and set them up for failure."
School officials said they want to raise standards for student-athletes and reinforce that athletics is a privilege. They said they are planning a "staggered implementation" of the new policy in order to help students transition.
"We want to push," said Tiffany Byrd, coordinator in the district's Office of Interscholastic Athletics. "We don't want to punish."
The current policy, which requires that students have no more than one failing grade to be eligible to play, will stay in place for the 2016-2017 school year.
The proposal would make the district the last in the region to revise its academic eligibility policies. The General Assembly approved legislation in 2011 requiring the Department of Education to set a statewide minimum standard. The Department of Education recommended that local districts set that standard at 2.0, or a C.
Baltimore officials said they consider a 1.75 equivalent to a C-, not a D, and changed school grading policy last year to reflect this.
The district would phase in the new standards that eventually would require student-athletes to maintain a C average and have no more than one failing grade to be academically eligible for participation.
Officials said the policy change would better position students to meet eligibility requirements in the NCAA, which requires students to maintain a GPA of 2.3 to play sports and receive scholarships.
Cameran Edwards, 17, a football player at Edmondson High School, said higher academic standards are a good idea.
"You have a lot of athletes sometimes that struggle in classes," he said. "Some don't want to go to class. I really think this gives athletes the idea that they have to push themselves and do what they're supposed to do."
Edwards, with a 3.2 GPA, has already qualified to play NCAA Division I sports.
Since 2011, several school systems — including Baltimore, Howard, Carroll, Prince George's and Montgomery counties — have all set a 2.0 minimum requirement for eligibility to participate in school sports. In Harford County students are deemed ineligible if they receive a failing grade in any subject on a quarterly report card, or received a failing grade in any subject as a final grade.
Dana Johnson, athletic director and volleyball coach at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in East Baltimore, said she initially opposed changing the policy to require a 2.0 minimum.
In a city where athletics is used to keep students safe by keeping them engaged in sports and off the streets, she said, the new standard might have unintended consequences.
"We would probably lose the truly at-risk kids," she said.
Johnson said she changed her mind when the NCAA changed its minimum requirements.
"I just figured, if we're not preparing our kids for the next level, what are we doing?" she said.
She said she supported phasing in the new standard.
"We have to change the way the kids think," Johnson said. "I think that's one of the best things we can do to get our kids acclimated to it."
Academic support will be crucial in the coming years, officials said, because under the new policy, athletes would have to maintain the 2.0 throughout the season and not just at the point when eligibility decisions are made.
Byrd told school board members recently that the district wanted to phase in the policy to "develop the supports we feel have not been in place and enforced consistently."
The proposal calls for schools to keep track of students who need additional academic support — such as those who need remedial classes in summer school, or those removed from athletic teams because their grades have dropped — to prevent them from falling through the cracks.
Byrd said the district's athletic directors expressed concern that the policy could drastically reduce the number of students at smaller schools who would be eligible to play sports.
Board members debated whether students would be harmed more by an abrupt shift in policy or by low expectations.
"This could impact kids who have been failed all along the way," board member Cheryl Casciani said. "The support better be there or this doesn't amount to a hill of beans. You're just penalizing kids."
Board member Martha James-Hassan took issue with the proposed timeline for the change. If the district had the students' best interest at heart, she said, it would raise the standards immediately.
"This is about adults who aren't really up for the change, or resistant to change themselves," James-Hassan said. "If we're saying, 'We're going to let you by with a 1.75,' they're not even going to get into college."
Scott, who ran track at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School, said he understands that city students have unique challenges. But he doesn't believe standards should be lowered for them.
"They not helping poor, black kids," he said. "They're holding them back. They don't need pity."
Baltimore Schools CEO Sonja Santelises said that her staff would continue to gather feedback on the change before the school board votes to adopt the policy.
She said increasing the standard was a "non-negotiable," but the transition period remains a "tension."
"If I could, I would institute the standard tomorrow, but we want to be responsive to students and families," Santelises said. "The goal is not to have a policy that hurts kids. The goal is to have a policy that has high expectations, but also give schools and families the supports to meet them."
Baltimore Sun reporter Katherine Dunn contributed to this article.
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