Students are being penalized for the pandemic year. A year in which there was no option but to stay home, with no supports, during the California lock down. These students are benched and sports are being canceled due to bad grades that were remedied by AB 104 without any mention of sports participation.

AB 104 was approved by California Governor Gavin Newsom on July 1, 2021.

The bill seeks to remedy the hardship of the 2020-2021 pandemic year in which more than 30% of K-12 students across the state of California had at least 1 failing class. The bill offers two options, retention and a pass/no pass grade remedy as to not affect GPA. The bill text can be read here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB104

We, the parents, are writing a petition to request an amendment to the bill that is to be sent to the author of the bill, Lorena Gonzalez, and to the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. AB 104 is meant to help students succeed and remedy the hardship they faced during distance learning. Although grades can be remedied and a student can be retained, the bill does not discuss sports and extra curricular activities. The lack of mention of sports and extra curricular activities has had a negative effect on students in their learning environments as sports and extra curricular activities are essential for some students academic growth.

55.5% of all students across the USA play a school sport. 97% of students who play sports in high school graduated with a high school diploma. 15% of students who play sports in high school are more likely to go to college and 73% of those students are more likely to graduate with a degree. 82% of female executives played a sport in high school. Playing high school sports has shown to help battle obesity, disuade students from using recreational drugs, increase concentration, promote social skills, and prevent bullying.

The lack of sports and extra curricular activities addressed in the bill has posed a negative impact on many students across the state. As an example, at Deer Valley High School in Antioch, California, students have been practicing for football every day throughout summer. These same students were not guaranteed a spot in the sport but participated in training and scrimmages anyway. These students were allowed to then try out for the team, again without being guaranteed a spot on the team and attend trainings 6 days per week. The coaches then had the students who were negatively impacted by the pandemic year fill out a form requesting changes to their grades (pass/no pass). Despite this and the remedy that AB 104 provided, many students were benched due to Antioch Unified School Districts policy of using the last semesters grades as the deciding factor. Last semesters grades being the grades received in the pandemic year which should have been of no fault to the student.

The students who had less than a 2.0 were refused a jersey in front of the entire team. The students whose grades were remedied are still sitting on a bench due to the "number of F's or no pass received". It is known that these students now have passing grades for this current semester and these same students have been attending study hall with the team prior to practice occurring every day after school in which they complete their homework.

These students are being penalized for the pandemic year. Please help us amend AB 104 to include no pandemic year penalty for sports and extra curricular activities.