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The Covington County Board of Education adopted revisions to a board policy on the procedures for selecting school cheerleaders during a regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 9.

Superintendent Shannon Driver announced revisions to section 6.05.4 in the board’s policy, which discusses how varsity and junior varsity cheerleaders are selected at each county school. Superintendent Shannon Driver announced revisions to section 6.05.4 in the board’s policy, which discusses how varsity and junior varsity cheerleaders are selected at each county school. The “Tim Tebow rule” in Alabama allows homeschooled students to play sports at the public school in which they are zoned. Students must still try out for the team and meet academic and residency requirements.

“Since the Tebow rule went into effect with athletics, we have allowed outside participation in other sports and organizations. Now, we are streamlining this to make it the same across the board. Students have to enroll for two school periods a day and meet all the other requirements set by the Alabama High School Athletic Association,” Driver said.

According to Driver, the current board policy has been in place for approximately 20 years. Students learn skills and routines during the week before judges select cheerleaders on the final day of the week based on a scoring system. Judges’ selections currently account for 70 percent with the final 30 percent from teacher evaluations.

“We ran into a problem this year even though we don’t have many homeschoolers wanting to cheer. We had homeschooled students get scores from community leaders until we could adjust this policy. A committee of cheer sponsors, principals, and our system’s curriculum coordinator Nikki Guilford devised this policy,” he said.

Driver added that cheer sponsors currently have no input on the selection of their squads.

“I’m sure that was done for a purpose, but in every other sport or organization, the sponsor has partial or even full determination. They don’t have judges who come in like cheerleading. Two of our schools (Pleasant Home and Straughn) are now competing statewide.”

The board’s adopted revisions state that judges’ scores will now comprise 75 percent of the scoring. The remaining 25 percent will be given to the sponsor who will complete a rubric score sheet with five components.

“One component still has input from the teachers. The sponsor will now take input from teachers and then assign a score in her rubric for one of the five areas. The sponsor will tabulate everything to come up with 25 points including what the teacher input was and add it to the 75 points from the judges. We also included in the revised policy that a student must be enrolled at the beginning of the semester. I felt like it was a pretty good compromise overall since we are using one set of rules for everybody,” Driver said.

In other business, the board administered certificates of affirmation for new school board member Jed Blackwell and John P. (Sonny) Thomasson, who was uncontested in the 2024 election. Blackwell defeated incumbent Jimmy Rodgers in the general election in November. Thomasson was selected to serve a two-year term as the board’s vice president.

“We would like to welcome Mr. Blackwell and appreciate you coming. We look forward to serving with you,” Board Member Jeff Bailey said. “I look forward to working with each of you,” Blackwell added.

The board approved one personnel matter during the meeting: the resignation of Sarah Belle Allen as counselor at Florala High School retroactive to Nov. 22. The board also heard a distribution of financial reports that have been reconciled to most current bank statements from chief school finance officer Ressie Gray.

The board set the next meeting date for Tuesday, Jan. 7, 5:30 p.m., at the central office.