Homeschool Sports Eligibility in Florida
Yes. A Florida home education student can play interscholastic sports at the zoned public school or at another public school in the district where the family lives, under the same standards as enrolled athletes.
How homeschool participation works
Section 1006.15 of the Florida Statutes lists home education students among the students eligible for interscholastic and extracurricular activities. The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) runs high school athletics, and the law forbids it from discriminating against a student for choosing public, private, or home education.
A district school board may not set participation requirements that make sports less accessible to home education students than to other students. The law also lets home education associations join the FHSAA as member schools, so a homeschool team can compete in its own right.
Eligibility standards apply from the first semester of grade 9, the same point they start for enrolled students.
Rules that decide participation
School and district
Your child can play at a public school located in the school district where you live. When none of the district's public or charter schools offers the sport and no private school there agrees to take your child, a school in an adjacent district is the next option.
Registered home education program
Your child must be in a home education program registered with the district under section 1002.41, kept in compliance during the season.
Educational progress
During the season, your child shows educational progress in every subject by a method you and the principal agree on. The law names a certified teacher's review of the work, grades from correspondence courses or from Florida College System, state university, or career center courses, standardized test scores above the 35th percentile, or another evaluation the home education law allows.
Same standards and fees
Your child meets the same standards of acceptance, behavior, and performance as other athletes. The school may charge only the fee enrolled students pay for that sport.
Before the season
First step
Ask the athletic director at the school you choose which progress method the principal will accept, and agree on it in writing before the season.
What can rule a player out
A student who moves from home education into a public school before or during the first grading period stays academically eligible for that grading period if the previous year's evaluation was successful.
When to start
Start before preseason practice. The law sets no homeschool deadline, but the agreed evaluation, the sports physical, and the school's own forms all take time.
School that fits around the season
Lessons start at your child's level and go wherever practice and travel do. We grade the work as it is submitted and keep the grades and transcript a school or league may ask to see.
$149/month per child after the trial.