‘Gamesmanship’: Rock Hill public charter Legion Collegiate official talks SCHSL lawsuit
Legion Collegiate Academy recently joined several schools across the state in suing the South Carolina High School League. The lawsuit claims recently-added amendments to the SCHSL’s bylaws “intentionally and illegally” discriminate against public charter and private schools.
Since the filing last week, Legion principal and longtime educator in the area, Dr. TK Kennedy, spoke to The Herald via phone interview about why Legion got involved in the lawsuit.
“We want to be treated fairly,” Kennedy said. “That’s all we want. We want our kids to be treated fairly.”
Legion is the newest public charter school in Rock Hill. The school has a stated focus on athletics. Ahead of its inaugural year, many of the school’s students — enticed by the prospects of spending less time in the classroom and more time training for their respective sports — transferred from high schools in the Tri-County area.
Kennedy said many events that happened before and during Legion’s inaugural year has made him think the SCHSL did not want Legion to be a part of the league.
“In our first initial request to go to the high school league, the executive committee, which is made up of representatives from several public schools, delayed us and denied us membership at the time, saying we had to get ‘this’ and ‘that’ completed,” Kennedy said. “Right there, there was a feeling of, ‘We don’t want y’all in here.’”
That was at least what was felt by Legion’s families, Kennedy said.
“But we pressed on,” Kennedy said. “We knew we had that right to join the high school league, but again, my goal was to show the local community here that we were in there and we were going to play fair, by the rules.”
Kennedy said joining the high school league was important because it set Legion up to more easily schedule games against other SCHSL member schools. The league also has other benefits, like providing a governing structure and putting on an end-of-year championships.
In the end, the SCHSL’s appellate committee approved Legion’s appeal, after the Rock Hill charter school’s initial attempt to join the league was tabled, then later denied, by the SCHSL Executive Committee, The Herald previously reported. Legion athletic director Strait Herron said at the time that when Legion’s original membership request was denied, no reasons were ever offered to him or Legion officials.
SCHSL lawsuit
The amendments passed in March — the ones objected to in the aforementioned lawsuit — is what Kennedy calls a form of “gamesmanship” from the league.
Under one of the amendments that would go into effect for the 2020-21 school year, most students who transfer from a traditional public school to a charter or private school would have to sit out a year before they would be eligible to play on any athletic team.
“As a parent, if my child wants to go to a smaller school with elite athletics and rigorous academics, and I’m making a sacrifice to drive from the other side of York County, that kid is ineligible to play,” Kennedy said. “I just don’t see how this is going to help. What in this amendment is good for children? That’s the million dollar question: How is this amendment helping student-athletes?”
Kennedy continued: “We don’t have a feeder school, so kids come from everywhere, and you’re telling our families that their ninth grader cannot play for one year because they chose to come to Legion, to try something different, to have a choice?”
“In 2020, it’s hard to believe that we’re in that mindset. And it’s gamesmanship.”
The SCHSL has since moved to have this lawsuit dismissed, public records show. The motion states that “the plaintiffs lack standing to bring this action against the defendants,” or, in other words, the plaintiffs don’t have legal rights to sue or challenge actions by the league over the issues in question.
The Herald requested comment from the SCHSL via email and attached a download of the lawsuit in that email. An SCHSL spokesperson replied that any “secondhand sharing of a document via media will not be commented on.”
Legion Collegiate Academy next year
Legion is one of 12 schools across the state to be plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The school joins Southside Christian, Christ Church, St. Joseph’s, Greer Middle College, Brashier Middle College, Greenville Technical Charter, Fox Creek, Gray Collegiate, Oceanside Collegiate, Palmetto Scholar’s and Bishop England.
Legion opened on its temporary site off Bird Street in Rock Hill in August 2019. The school’s permanent site will be ready sometime after the first day of school in the fall semester of the 2020-21 school year, The Herald previously reported. And once the site is finished, the school will need to find homes for its football, baseball and softball teams.
Herron said earlier this month that the school put in requests last year to the four York County school districts to rent their sports facilities, and each request was denied. Herron said he will make the same requests ahead of this upcoming school year.
Kennedy said Legion’s purpose is an important one in the community.
“My personal opinion is, if families want to sacrifice and make choices to attend the school wherever they feel is going to meet the needs of their individual child — in the days of anxiety, in the days of COVID-19, of all the things young people are dealing with... That family should be allowed to go and participate at any school that they want to attend,” Kennedy said.
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 8:53 AM.
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