Grady High School’s championship boys basketball program is on “severe warning status” this season after allowing an academically ineligible student to play for the team last year.
The violation was discovered by Atlanta Public Schools officials, who reported it to the Georgia High School Association, which oversees Georgia inter-school competitions, in March.
School district spokesperson Pat St. Claire issued a written statement this week that said in part: “We are proud of the adults who modeled integrity and self-reported this oversight. While the penalties imposed as a result of this mistake are very unfortunate, we have used this situation as a teachable moment for our students.”
The team, which won a regional championship and advanced to the Final Four round of the state playoffs last year, was also ordered to forfeit its regional title, pay a $750 fine and forfeit all games in which the student participated.
Any similar violations could result in even stiffer penalties, the Georgia High School Association warned Grady in March.
“Allowing an academically ineligible student to participate is a very serious violation of GHSA By-Laws,” Georgia High School Association compliance director Carror Wright wrote in a sanctioning the program.
The student enrolled at Grady in early January and began playing for the team that month. His ineligibility was discovered after the season ended when his mother asked if he could play for a fifth year, according to district correspondence. That prompted school staff to double-check his transcript for accuracy. After they discovered he hadn’t earned the 2.5 credits in the previous semester required for eligibility, they reported the violation to the GHSA.
Atlanta Public Schools Athletics Director Jasper Jewell did not respond to an interview request Friday.
Grady's football program was also the target of sanctions after more than a dozen players were found to have been fraudulently enrolled during the 2013-14 season.
In that case, GHSA required the school to forfeit games in which ineligible students played and barred Grady from participating in football playoffs the following season. Several school employee resigned or were suspended or reassigned. Several families who lived outside the city of Atlanta were retroactively billed for tuition.
And at Mays High School, two members of the 2014 football team were fraudulently enrolled, and investigators could not determine where another five students lived, according to an internal investigative report. School district spokesperson Latisha Gray said earlier this year that a follow-up investigation found that only one student was improperly enrolled. However, the district did not provide records at the time supporting that finding.
On Friday, school district officials were unable to say whether the district reported the Mays findings to the Georgia High School Association. But earlier this year, Gray said Mays was not sanctioned by the association in connection with the findings.
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