Decatur High has played football on the same site between McDonough Street and Commerce Driver (formerly Oliver Street) for 99 consecutive seasons or since Oct. 14, 1921 when it beat Kirkwood 13-0.
Whether the school will make number 100 gets determined this week by a nine-person COVID Response Team comprised mostly of administrators in City Schools of Decatur’s central office.
Superintendent David Dude has created a proposal for returning some extra-curricular groups like sports and clubs to in-person activity. The first set of proposals, 10 total, got reviewed over the weekend, including proposals for fall sports football, softball, volleyball and the defending 5-A state champion cross country team.
No Decatur High sports team has begun its season. While cross-country runners have been training individually, the other three sports haven’t practiced since late July.
During a Sept. 11 interview with the AJC Dude explained how the proposal works.
“The proposal is essentially a questionnaire,” he said. “So the representative of a certain activity, like [Athletics and Activities Director] Rodney Thomas would fill it out and tell us things like, ‘here’s what I’m proposing we do, here’s how we’re keeping everybody safe, here’s how we’ll monitor that everybody’s doing what they say they’re going to do, here’s how it benefits kids,' and things like that.”
Dude described the process as a “back-and-forth,” between an activity’s representative, himself and the COVID team, featuring a series of questions and updates. “If we get to a point where we’re comfortable [with a proposal] then we’ll approve it and move forward with the plan.”
But football and softball, among others, can’t afford lengthy durations for approval. Thomas told the AJC last week that, in order to have a season, football must play its Oct. 2 district opener against Arabia Mountain, leaving barely two weeks of practice if approved this week. Meantime, assuming a decision is handed down this week, softball would have about three weeks of games and practices to prepare for the region tournament opener on Oct. 6.
Dude did say that decisions can be “fast tracked” for sports facing crunch time in their schedules.
In an email over the weekend Thomas wrote, “Please keep your fingers crossed that we can resume football and softball this week.”
City Schools of Decatur still hasn’t decided when the student body at large will return to the classroom, although a decision is expected Friday (Sept 18) for how CSD schools will proceed after Sept. 25.
During a Sept 8 school board meeting Dude appeared leaning towards grades K-12 remaining in a virtual setting, where they’ve been since mid-March, possibly through Christmas. But he clarified his thoughts during the recent interview.
“I’m not saying I’m leaning any which way,” he said. "I do think some people have just assumed we’ll be going back [to classrooms] full time like some other districts have done. I wanted to make sure that it’s clear, that is not a foregone conclusion.
“I do think,” he added, “it’s quite possible, at least for the foreseeable future, that we’ll still have to have at least a period of virtual [learning], but I don’t know the length of that.”
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