Washington school board reaches consensus on spectator rules

BRIGHTON — The Washington School board met at the Brighton community building Wednesday night for its regular meeting, where members said they agreed with new guidelines that would allow refs and school administrators to remove disruptive audience members from extracurricular events.

The rules, written in next school year’s parent/guardian activities guide, would suspend such spectators for a certain number of games depending on their number of offenses in an academic year: one game for the first, four for the second, and a calendar year for the third. The list of unacceptable behaviors includes use of artificial noisemakers, interference with the event, inappropriate chants, signs or banners, and “any conduct deemed inappropriate by school administration or officials,” among other things.

While decision-makers last month worried about unfair applications of the rules, Superintendent Willie Stone said Wednesday that the policy gave reasonable discretion to those making the calls at games.

“The thing we probably didn’t see or didn’t talk about as much is the warning,” he said. “If we’re having problems with kids jumping up and down on the bleachers and possibly hurting the bleachers, we’re going to go talk to the kids and say, ‘Hey, you guys need to stop, this is your warning,’ … in my mind, after an administrator talks to you, you either stop or you should get kicked out.”

Still, the superintendent said he erred toward minimal repercussions for early offenses as a check against misinformed or low-tolerance referees.

“That’s my only worry, is if you have one that has radar ears on that gets butt-hurt immediately, right off the bat,” Stone said. “Now, if you’re at number four, I don’t care. I think you struck out three times, that’s good enough.”

Since June, Stone said he and Athletic Director Nathan Miller added some clarifications to the policy. The new version says a suspended spectator is barred from attending any extracurricular events until they skip the number of games specified, “of the same level of competition.”

That means a rowdy parent asked to leave a high school baseball game for a first offense would also be suspended from softball tournaments, junior high baseball games, and any other district extracurricular events until after the next high school baseball game. Someone suspended for a calendar year would have to miss every game of every sport for that year.

For incidents at the last game of a season, the sentence would extend until the next scheduled game of that level the following season, according to Stone.

Board members said they’d like to see all suspensions after the third impose the maximum, calendar-year suspension, even if they take place seasons after the initial three.

“Any time it happens after one year, if you haven’t learned, you don’t go through the process again,” Board Member Eric Turner said. “You should be given another opportunity, see if you learned from the situation. If you haven’t, you’re done. I can’t believe we would get to that, but it’s got to be firm.”

While others on the board agreed, Nathan Miller said he hoped that procedure wouldn’t come up, as he wasn’t aware of anyone being asked to leave games more than twice.

“This is more setting up for that first time or second time,” he said. “We’re just trying to create some consistency.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com