DAYTON — A school is working to fix a problem that created major heartache for a basketball team.
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News Center 7 previously reported that state officials forced Dunbar High School to forfeit a tournament game for using an ineligible player.
The district has a plan to prevent this from happening again.
“Just think about your career ending over a situation like this,” Dr. David Lawrence, superintendent of Dayton Public Schools, said.
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Lawrence said seniors on the Dunbar High School basketball team had their final chance to play basketball stolen from them.
“We had those kids at Dunbar and we had to explain that, you talk about a room full of children crying, parents crying, families,” he said.
Lawrence said Dunbar was forced to forfeit and disqualified from the state tournament because it was discovered they used a charter school student for 22 seconds of game time.
The district was unaware that the student had been suspended from his school and therefore ineligible to play under OHSAA rules.
“We have no access to those records,” Lawrence said.
The district is now demanding signed agreements with all charter schools that have students who are allowed to play on DPS sports teams.
A half dozen charter schools, like Richard Allen Academy and Liberty High School, are already on board.
It forces the charter schools to notify DPS of any issues with grades or discipline that would make a great student ineligible to complete.
Lawrence is a Dunbar graduate himself.
He doesn’t want the pain they felt to ever happen to any DPS school.
“We’re going to definitely support our students no matter what it takes,” Lawrence said.
He said this is simply about having a level playing field for public schools and charter schools.
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