My first point is that working together, we can maintain extracurricular opportunities in the schools.

As the public school budget decreases, more and more public schools are cutting there athletic and extracurricular programs. allowing home schooled children to "pay-to-play" sports will help the public school system save their athletic and extracurricular programs. In order to keep their athletic programs, many schools have already gone to a ‘pay-to-play’ system among the public school students after Proposal A passed in 1993. When this proposal first passed, some schools misused the ‘pay-to play’ system in such a way as to promote students who could afford to play. After looking at the initial problems that arose with ‘pay-to-play’ the Michigan High School Athletic Association established a document called the "Participation Fee Primer," that helps the public schools set up a ‘pay-to-play’ program in their school that creates equality. Per this document, a "participation fee" is a financial assessment made by a school district for its students to participate. This ‘pay- to- play’ can be scaled according to the financial ability of the student. By adding the home schooled students to this pay-to-play system, not only is there a larger budget to manage these programs, but creates a more equal representation of the students in their area. Together, home schooled and public students can enjoy the continued opportunity of extracurricular activities.

all children receive a high quality education and no child is left behind. In A brief history of American Homeschooling, www.geocities.com, Homeschooling was defined as the education of children at home, rather than a public or private school. An estimated 1.9 to 2.4 million children are home schooled in the United States. While there are many different reasons or motivations for home schooling across the US, our society is impacted if any child is left behind no matter where they learn. A study by the Michigan High School Association showed that students who participate in athletics, have a higher grade point average, had increased attendance, decreased discipline referrals, decreased drop outs and that participation in high school athletics was often a predictor of later success – in college, a career and becoming a contributing member of society. For home schooled students, sports would provide social training needed to be becoming productive citizens like team work, sportsmanship, winning, losing, hard work and exposure to different ethnic and religious backgrounds. If we truly are concerned about no children left behind, we must understand that education is more than head knowledge, it is all about training the person in a holistic manner to be a responsible and useful person so that he or she can contribute and be a blessing to the community he may belong to. While there is testing to make sure home schooled students are keeping on track with their education of school matters, allowing home schooled students to participate in public sports keeps them on track to becoming a productive citizens.