Wichita East High School has been embroiled in controversy over the last week.
On Thursday, it was revealed the school asked a special needs athlete to remove the varsity letter on his jacket approximately one year ago.
Michael Kelley, who has Down syndrome and autism, plays basketball in the school’s team for special needs students.
“Another parent, from what I’m told, was upset that my son was wearing his letter jacket,” mother Jolinda Kelley told KSN.
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Michael’s family claims the school gave him a girl’s sweatshirt to wear instead of his letter jacket, saying that it was school policy to only allow varsity players to wear the letter.
The story has gained wide attention, including an online petition and support from Chicago Bulls assistant coach Adrian Griffin.
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“We have considered it. Our decision was no. That it is not appropriate, we believe, in our situation, because it is not a varsity level competition,” said school Principal Ken Thiessen.
However, the school district’s Athletic Director J. Means told Jolinda when he was an athletic director at a school within the district, special needs athletes were allowed to earn and wear their letters.
In order to unify the district’s schools’ varying policies, Jolinda has been asking the school board for a policy change for the past year.
At a school board meeting Monday evening, the board’s president Sheril Logan said nothing would be done for now.
“It’s not something that we are going to do tonight,” Logan said. “We are still collecting information.”
In an open letter posted on the Wichita East High School’s website on Sunday, Thiessen defended himself and the school’s work with the Tri-County league in which some special needs students participate.
“I have fully supported the work that has been underway the last nine months by the Tri-County league’s board to develop an athletic lettering program that creates league-wide standards for Tri-County athletes to earn an athletic letter and recommend a letter design. If the league’s recommendation is that the letter looks just like each school’s varsity athletic letter, I can and will support that as well. Yes a comment was made about a year ago to Mr. Kelley’s parent concerning the appropriateness of the letter on the jacket; however he has continued to wear his East High letter jacket in the hallways of our school.”
Jolinda Kelley has promised to continue with what she calls “a movement” to ensure that the policy is changed and enforced.
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