Carnegie risks losing athletics

Board to consider ending magnets’ sports teams

Houston’s Carnegie Vanguard High School, known for its elite academic program, would lose its competitive sports teams under a proposal up for consideration by the school board Thursday.

The district administration is seeking the board’s approval to prohibit specialty schools, which lack attendance zones and accept transfer students, from playing in the University Interscholastic League. The league governs competitive athletics in Texas. Instead, students could join teams at their zoned campuses, practicing before or after class.

Carnegie Vanguard, a magnet high school for gifted students, is the district’s only specialty school with UIL teams. The proposal would phase out the competitive programs there by theendof2017-18, according to a Houston Independent School District news release issued Wednesday.

District officials say the proposal is a move toward fairness. Its specialty schools typically are small and may not have enough students to make up teams, particularly to meet federal Title IX requirements concerning women’ s athletics.

Carnegie, in Midtown, has UIL teams for baseball, cross country, girls’ volleyball and co-ed tennis.

Parents at Carnegie start-- edanonline petition to keep UIL sports there in late 2015 amid concerns they were at risk

district committee of high school principals voted Feb. 1 to recommend to the school board that UIL teams be limited to traditional comprehensive high schools. However, the committee added that Carnegie Vanguard should be grandfathered and keep its teams or gradually phase them out.

The students still could play club or intramural sports at the school.

Bellaire High Principal Michael McDonough explained that while he did not want to “pull the volleyballs from (students’) hands,” he worried about allowing U IL sports at more specialty schools, according to a transcript of the meeting.

“Were it to expand, I do worry (about) the impact that that would have on all of our programs,” McDonough said, according to the transcript.

Several Carnegie parents and students pleaded for their teams to remain. Kai Rummel, a sophomore and second-baseman at Carnegie, argued that athletics fit into the district’s promotion of a “college-bound culture.”

“Teamwork, skill-building, workethic are all things that are required to succeed after students pass through HISD’s influence,” Rummel said, according to the transcript. “And these things are all taught by U IL baseball .” ericka.mellon@chron.com twitter.com/e_mellon