Columbus student wants to play high school baseball, but district is refusing. Here’s why
A Columbus teen’s yearlong request to play high school baseball while attending an arts school has come to a critical point.
Rene Rodriguez IV, a 16-year-old junior at Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts, and his parents want the Muscogee County School District Board to allow him to play baseball on the team at Hardaway High School. He resides in Hardaway’s attendance zone, so he could be a student there if he didn’t attend Rainey-McCullers, a magnet school for grades 6-12 that doesn’t offer baseball among the sports it started this school year.
A Georgia High School Association bylaw allows for such permission to be granted, but it must be approved by the local school board.
The MCSD board discussed the issue during Monday night’s work session. Board chairwoman Pat Hugley Green said the consensus of the board members is that voting on the matter during its next meeting, Feb. 21, wouldn’t give the administration enough time to gather and provide information about the pros and cons of changing the policy. So the board is expected to address the issue during its annual retreat, Feb. 25.
Now that high school baseball season began last week in Georgia, and Muscogee County teams already have played games, Rene hopes his window of opportunity doesn’t close.
“High school is a very precious time,” Rene told the Ledger-Enquirer. “You only get four years, and you only get one shot at it. And if you’re not doing it to the full percentage of the way you want to do it, you’re gonna look back and regret it. My whole thing here is we make sure those regrets don’t happen.”
‘I fell in love with the school’
During his elementary school years, Rene played T-ball, football, basketball and soccer in recreation leagues. While attending Blackmon Road Middle School, he selected Rainey-McCullers for high school because he is passionate about playing guitar.
“I fell in love with the school,” he said. “It’s a very nice school. The teachers there are amazing. The faculty is top-notch.”
Rene knew Rainey-McCullers didn’t offer interscholastic sports then.
“I didn’t see myself playing athletics,” he said. “… But as you grow, you’re going to change over time.”
The student’s father, Rene Rodriguez III, told the L-E, “He’s definitely not the same kid when he made that decision in eighth grade. These kids find themselves in high school. He changed. He found a love for a sport, but he also has a love for music.”
In January 2022, their initial inquiry about Rene possibly playing baseball at Carver, the high school nearest Rainey-McCullers, was nixed in a phone conversation with MCSD athletics director Jeff Battles — and resulted in thinking “no options exist to allow for this situation,” Rodriguez said.
At the end of his sophomore year, Rene started playing baseball in the West Georgia Dixie rec league. His interest and proficiency as a first baseman and outfielder increased, and he joined the Rip City Pirates travel ball team.
Last summer, Rene worked at a concession stand in Golden Park, where the Columbus Chatt-a-Hoots play in the collegiate Sunbelt Baseball League. The experience prompted Rene to take playing baseball more seriously, thinking about the possibility of earning a college scholarship.
Rene and his parents read the GHSA bylaws and found a rule that allows students who attend a magnet school to participate in extracurricular activities at the school where they reside in the attendance zone — as long as the school board approves.
“We’re trying to get access to more opportunities and scholarships for not just myself but kids all over Rainey-McCullers,” Rene said.
Some sports, but not baseball
At the beginning of this school year, Rainey-McCullers established interscholastic sports teams for cross country, golf, swimming/diving and tennis. Only those sports were allowed, MCSD superintendent David Lewis told the L-E in an email, because they are “more individually based and coached by members of their staff and are therefore not dependent on the schedules of multiple coaches of team sports from the eight other high schools.”
In November, Rene’s mother, Lindsay Woodson, emailed Hardaway athletics director Kendall Mills and requested her son be allowed to play baseball on that team. Battles replied on behalf of Mills and suggested that Rene consider playing one of the sports Rainey-McCullers offers.
Rene, however, wants to play high school baseball. So his parents presented their case to the school board at the December meeting. Because their presentation was during the public agenda portion of the meeting — and not on the action agenda — the board didn’t vote on the request or discuss the issue at the meeting.
Jan. 9, when Rene’s parents saw their request wasn’t on the agenda for that month’s meeting, they called board chairwoman Pat Hugley Green of District 1. They were told the proper procedure would have been to ask a board member to put the request on the action agenda instead of addressing the board during the public agenda, Rodriguez said.
Green promised “to help move the initiative along” and to ask the superintendent to “gather the necessary information to present to the board for review,” Rodriguez said.
Jan. 12, Rene’s parents met with Lewis in his office. The superintendent told them he opposes their request.
“He then cited that he did not want to disrupt the ‘tribe mentality’ at the school,” Rodriguez said, “saying that he felt introducing sports at the school would upset students and change the cultural dynamics at the school. He then referenced his need to not upset the (Rainey-McCullers) Foundation members by bringing sports to the school as it was not part of the original vision of the foundation members.”
Also on Jan. 12, board vice chairwoman of District 5 Laurie McRae told Rene’s parents in an email, “I think it needs to be addressed/discussed publicly, especially after their asking during the public agenda. I too would like to better understand the policy and what barriers, if any, there are to changing it.”
Jan. 30, Rodriguez said, he discovered new verbiage in the Rainey-McCullers admissions policy on the school’s website. He said he used Google’s cache service to find the statement saying students waive their rights to request to play sports at their zoned school wasn’t there as recently as Jan. 9.
MCSD response
The L-E asked MCSD communications director Kimberly Wright on Friday for the school district’s response to Rodriguez’s allegation that the Rainey-McCullers admissions policy was changed on the website. This story will be updated with her reply when it is received.
Since Jan. 31, the L-E has asked Wright several times for MCSD to make an official available to explain on camera for the video accompanying this story why Rene’s request hasn’t been granted. The L-E also has asked several times for a copy of the district’s policy that governs this situation.
Instead, on Feb. 8, Wright emailed the L-E a statement from Lewis.
The superintendent noted, when planning for the arts school started in 2006, team sports weren’t included in the programming “due to the inherent conflicts that would inevitably arise between after-school, evening and weekend arts-related activities of a mature arts school and the athletic practices and contests of eight other district high schools that all offer arts programming as well.”
In addition to the school board approving the plan, Lewis said, it was part of promoting the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax that Columbus voters approved in 2015 to help fund construction of the arts school.
“Our district is an avid supporter of both athletics and the arts, but given the initial vision for the school and the inevitable scheduling conflicts that would arise, students must choose to attend the Rainey-McCullers SOTA for what it offers or to attend a comprehensive high school that offers the arts and interscholastic sports that are available at their zoned high school,” Lewis wrote.
‘Battling some political issues’
Woodson praised the education her son receives at Rainey-McCullers, but she doesn’t think the district’s administration is providing him an equal opportunity to be well-rounded.
“The school is amazing,” Woodson, a sales and compensation analyst at Aflac, told the L-E. “What I feel like we’re battling is some political issues. I feel like we’re battling some of the original founders of what Rainey was supposed to be about.”
Rodriguez, an engineer at TSYS, added, “We have to change with the times. If the students are saying we want these opportunities to be available to us, it’s not forcing sports onto the students.”
Woodson said she knows several parents whose children were interested in attending Rainey-McCullers but chose to go elsewhere because the school didn’t offer their sport and others whose children transferred out of Rainey-McCullers when they wanted to play a high school sport.
“We’re fighting a battle that hopefully people behind us will never have to fight,” Woodson said.
Regardless of the outcome, Rene’s parents see their son learning lessons through this dispute that will help him have the grit and grace necessary to persevere through other tough times.
“As a mom, I couldn’t be more proud,” Woodson said. “It makes me feel like we did something right along the way for him to be this comfortable to talk about it. … He is really advocating for this, and we back him up 100%.”
Rene appreciates his parents’ support.
“It just makes me feel really grateful and really thankful that I have parents who will advocate for me like this,” he said.
Asked whether they contacted any lawyers to consider filing a lawsuit regarding their cause, Rodriguez said, “We don’t want to go to that level, but it’s definitely an option.”
This story was originally published February 13, 2023 at 10:55 AM.
