LCA avoids boycott by Fayette County schools

Lexington Christian Academy won’t be targeted by Fayette County’s public schools in the “schedule reduction” plan proposed by the Kentucky Association of State Superintendents last week.

After months of talks — talks that began long before the KASS unveiled its plan last week — LCA has agreed to self-impose “Proposition 2,” which means that any student who transfers to LCA from a Lexington public school after the seventh grade is ineligible to play athletics for a year. In turn, Fayette County will impose the same restriction on students transferring from LCA to any of its schools. Don Adkins, athletic director for Fayette County’s public schools, said Bryan Station, Henry Clay, Lafayette, Paul Dunbar and Tates Creek have been told they are free to schedule LCA next school year.

Adkins said that his boss, Fayette County superintendent Stu Silberman, informed the KASS of the agreement with LCA and that it was supportive. At the same time, Adkins said Fayette County is “very supportive” of the KASS’s plan.

“We want to show that we’re willing to work to make sure that what we’re doing is, No. 1, best for the kids, and No. 2, developing a good relationship between everybody involved so we can all sit down and work this out,” Adkins said.

Sayre was already exempted from the scheduling boycott because it has had a good relationship with Lexington’s public schools. Adkins said that if Lexington Catholic agreed to self-impose Prop 2, it could avoid the scheduling boycott. But Lexington Catholic athletic director Dave Bunnell said his administration decided it would “not be in the best interests” of the school to do that.

LCA athletic director Brad Walls said this is a one-year agreement that he hopes will lead to a “long-term resolution” to the public-private sports controversy. “My hope is that the rest of the state will pick up on the fact that here in Lexington we’re trying to work together,” Walls said, “and that this is a starting point for working things out. There’s a lot of fighting going on, and a lot of people don’t really know what they’re fighting about, just that there’s a battle and they’re on one side or the other.”

Walls said that LCA and Lexington Catholic hope to put together a proposal that would tweak Prop 2 that they could take before the KHSAA Delegate Assembly in the fall of 2009.

Just how much effect the schedule-reduction plan has state-wide is unknown. The superintendent of Louisville’s public schools has said it’s not going to change its way of scheduling. Owensboro’s public schools apparently aren’t going to boycott Owensboro Catholic.

Walls said he thinks the scheduling boycott will be felt most in central Kentucky. “I don’t think most places aren’t going to jump on this to a huge degree,” he said.