Court Opinion

ID: 9844714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:07:19.511538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:40.746923
License: Public Domain

HARSHBARGER, Justice,
dissenting:
The State Board’s extracurricular eligibility policy essentially regulates, as the majority recognizes, all extracurricular activities. If any student in grades seven though twelve fails to achieve or maintain a 2.0 grade point average, the student cannot participate in any extracurricular activities. The Wood County Board of Education challenged the State Board’s authority to enact the rule on the ground that local boards of education are vested by W.Va.Code, 18-2-25, with the exclusive right to control, supervise and regulate participation in extracurricular activities.
The majority concluded that the State Board has constitutional authority to erect an academic hurdle to participation in interscholastic athletic activities and other undefined nonacademic extracurricular activities, but then suggests that the State Board’s policy is unlawful to the extent that it places an educational barrier limiting participation in academic extracurricular activities.
The Court indicates that children can participate in student government, music and drama productions and the like without keeping a C average as is required of their counterparts who participate in interscholastic athletic activities, and possibly cheer-leading. My brothers would let a flautist flunk without forfeiting his or her flute. But pity the poor punter who did not pass.
The Court embraces elitism in the name of academic excellence and is focusing too narrowly upon academic or intellectual functions and ignoring, even condemning, other important extracurricular activities. In Pauley v. Kelly, 162 W.Va. 672, 255 S.E.2d 859 (1979), we recognized that a thorough and efficient system of schools encompassed an education that develops the minds and bodies of students to prepare them for useful and happy occupations, recreation, and citizenship. Given these broad objectives, why are “mind” building extracurricular activities of higher intrinsic value than “body” developers?
If I were to fashion any rule, it would be that if a student satisfies the State Board’s academic and attendance requirements for graduation with his or her class, all school programs would be open. There should be only one class of student. All efforts to emphasize quality and excellence should be promoted and there should be no chains upon children who want to try to make a mark in the world with whatever talents they possess.
Even more troubling is the majority’s failure to mention the rank unfairness resulting from the dual policy actions of the State Board and the Kanawha County Board of Education. A student in Kana-wha County could not participate in interscholastic activities if he failed to comply with the local board’s academic requirements, a C average and no F’s, while similarly situated students in every other county in the state could participate who had just the C average. If the State Board of Education had enacted a regulation requiring a C average to participate in extracurricular activities and had added an additional no-F policy applicable only to Kanawha County students, I suggest few lawyers, and probably no lay people, could find any conceivable set of facts to make the regulation rational.
This outright unequal treatment of students by the government is manifestly arbitrary and discriminatory. The state and county policies in tandem are so fundamentally unfair as to violate substantive due process.
But, basically, my dissent is predicated upon what I propose to be the utter non*26sense of the C rule and the F rule: although they sound worthy, their result is to place a higher academic achievement duty upon children who choose to participate in school-related extracurricular activities, than is required of those young people who spend their after-school hours loitering and practicing idleness!
Of course, this is barely a legal argument: school officials are entitled to be just as silly as we are, on occasion. And there has been, since the majority decision, but hardly because of it, moderation of the rules by both the Kanawha County and State boards — one suspects prompted by irate coaches and parents.
It is a pity that Meredith Willson's Professor Harold Hill * and the townspeople of River City could not have an opportunity to persuade my brethren:
“Trouble! Oh we’ve got trouble. Right here in River City! Right here in River City. With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool. That stands for Pool! We’ve surely got trouble! We’ve surely got trouble! Right here in River City! Right here in River City! Gotta figger out a way t’keep the young ones moral after Schooooool.”

M. Willson, The Music Man, pp. 38, 39 (1958).