Many schools in Alabama have seen their enrollment explode virtually overnight due to immigration. One unintended consequence of that has been a decline in student athletics. State Rep. Brock Colvin (R-Albertville) hopes to change that with his newly proposed bill.
Alabama high schools are classified by the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) based on average daily membership, starting at 1A up through 7A. Colvin’s bill, HB298, would restrict non-athletic English language (EL) learner students from being counted toward a school’s daily average for the first five years of enrollment. However, EL students who choose to play sports would be counted in the daily average.
Colvin told 1819 News that many schools seeing their enrollment increase overall are experiencing the opposite effect on their pool of student-athletes.
“For a school like Albertville, 10 years ago, when I was in high school, we were a 5A. Now we’re a mid-7A, and what we see is while, yes, our number of students in school has increased, our athletic pool has not. I would even argue our athletic pool has decreased,” he said.
Colvin argued that the quick increase in students due to immigration has prematurely thrust some schools into higher classifications, causing safety issues and lower morale for many teams.
“Look at football. We get the brakes beat off of us every Friday night,” he said. “I’m not getting on to our student-athletes for that because it’s not fair. It’s not their fault. It would be like going and asking UAB to say, ‘Hey, by the way, you’re going to be in the SEC this year. Good luck.’ It’s just not a fair league for us to be in. So, what happens is your students’ athletes who do like football or whatever sport is impacted, they just move to another school.”
Albertville was 0-10 for the 2024 football season. According to MaxPreps, the Aggies’ last victory came in 2022 against Boaz — their only win for the season.
Colvin said that in addition to some student-athletes leaving, the EL students taking their place often have no interest in sports.
“Really our athletic pool has shrunk because the EL kids that move here, they really don’t participate in much of anything,” he said. “They’re not interested in extracurricular activities. They’re here to work, or they’re forced to come here because their parents drug them here to work. So, I don’t know if it’s fair to count all those when you’re doing sports classifications because it’s not an accurate reflection of our athletic pool.”
Colvin said his bill would simply do for athletics what another law passed in 2022 did for academics by not counting EL students’ grades toward a school’s overall report card for the first five years of their enrollment.
“My goal is to take that same exact principle from the academic side, reflect it on the athletic side to try to bring some fairness to sports,” he said. “…Sports can get kids out of trouble, it gives them the opportunity for scholarships to continue their education, in a lot of small towns, it’s the backbone of the community, so I’m just trying to give some relief to these poor student-athletes that have been dealt this very unfair hand.”
Aside from Albertville, Colvin said other school systems in north Alabama where immigration, illegal or otherwise, has been rampant, such as in Russellville, Phenix City, Fort Payne, Asbury, Boaz, Douglas, Collinsville, and Crossville. Crossville got rid of its football team due to a lack of participation — were facing the same issues.
“It’s probably going to take me educating a lot of members who don’t have this issue in their district to fully understand it, but if you’re here, you really understand it,” Colvin said.
He and other school officials have tried working with the AHSAA to get them to change their classification process without legislation, to no avail. Colvin said he recently had a good conversation with AHSAA director Heath Harmon on the matter, but the time to act is now.
“He [Harmon] said he wanted to study it a little longer and I said I don’t have time to study it anymore. Our community has studied it for 20 years. We got to do something,” Colvin said.
The bill will go before committee Wednesday, and “if all goes well,” it should be brought to the floor Thursday for a vote as part of the House’s immigration package.
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