Homeschool Sports Eligibility in Pennsylvania
Yes. Pennsylvania law requires a school district to let its home education students take part in district extracurricular activities, including interscholastic, varsity, and intramural sports.
How homeschool participation works
Act 67 of 2005 added subsection (f.1) to the home education law, section 1327.1 of the Public School Code. The activities it opens are those under section 511 of the code: clubs, musical ensembles, theatrical productions, and athletics, including every competitive contest between schools inside or outside the district.
The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) governs high school athletics, so its rules apply to a homeschooled athlete as the activity's governing organization.
If a sport requires a physical examination or medical test that the district offers its students, the district must let your child get it too. It must publish the dates and times in a local publication and on its website.
Rules that decide participation
Home education program
Your child is in a home education program under section 1327.1 of the Public School Code in the district where you live.
Eligibility and tryouts
Your child meets the eligibility criteria and the tryout criteria that apply to students enrolled in the district, or their equivalent.
Governing organization rules
Your child complies with all policies, rules, and regulations of the activity's governing organization, or their equivalent.
Before the season
First step
Ask the district athletic director what grade evidence it accepts as the equivalent of enrolled students' eligibility checks, and when it offers sports physicals.
What can rule a player out
The law does not require a district to include a homeschooled student in events such as the senior prom or commencement; those are local decisions.
When to start
Start before preseason practice, and watch the district's published dates for physicals.
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.