By rssfeeds-admin Court documents show that the district and the board of directors were being sued over accusations that extracurricular activities and education programs provided by the school to students, homeschool students and charter school students were not open to students from parochial schools. The lawsuit was filed by the Thomas More Foundation on behalf of two families in 2023.
“The State College Area School District is reimbursing the plaintiff’s legal fees and costs in the amount of $150,000,” Thomas Breth, the Special Counsel to the Thomas More Foundation, said.
Breth said that the district had informed the families that their kids couldn’t participate in extracurriculars despite paying taxes within district lines. There are two Catholic schools within district lines, Our Lady of Victory and Saint Joseph’s, but neither offers full options of organized sports, leaving the public school as the only option.
On June 10, the district agreed to settle with the students and guardians who were suing. Along with the announcement, court documents showed that several things were agreed upon and will be in place moving forward.
The district agreed to make extracurricular activities and programs available to all eligible students in the district while also imposing student selection criteria. However, parochial students whose schools sponsor interscholastic sports will not be eligible to participate in the same sports at the State College Area School District.
Similarly, the same rules will apply to any after-school program or club. If the parochial school offers the program itself or one of a similar nature, then the student will only be eligible for the one offered by the parochial school.
“We felt that the school district was acting in a discriminatory manner regarding these parochial school students,” Breth said.
WTAJ reached out to the State College Area School District for comment on the settlement, and the school solicitor gave the following in response.
“In the context of the issue of whether students who reside in the school district and attend parochial schools can participate in school district sponsored sports activities and teams, the school district had always believed that the school district could not permit such participation because, among other reasons, PIAA disfavored it. Through the litigation, the school district determined that this is not always the case. Because PIAA’s position on this subject is not clear, the Consent Order provides essentially that PIAA must first approve of parochial school student participation on school district sports teams before there is any obligation on the part of the school district to permit the participation,” Scott Etter said.
They also noted that when it comes to sports, if the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) declares a parochial student ineligible, then the school may also declare them ineligible without violating the agreement.
However, Breth said that his clients received an email from the district near the start of the case that didn’t include the PIAA.
“It had nothing to do with the PIAA,” Breth said. “One of their concerns was that they didn’t need any additional students to fill these extracurricular and co-curricular activities. They said they had enough students. The second concern that they expressed was that if they permit these parochial school students to participate, the parochial students might take a position away from a student enrolled in the State College Area School District.”
Regardless of the district’s concerns, they now have to allow the students to participate where applicable.
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