BY KAITLIN FRITZ AND KAITLIN RIZNYK
BengalNews Reporters
One minute she received a pat on the back and only minutes later was given an exasperated shake of a head, but this is the mixed reaction high school principal Naomi Cerri was expecting when she made a bold move to push academics over athletics.
With more than 20 years of experience in teaching and academic administration, Cerri saw her new position as principal of Lafayette High School as a way to improve the education of students attending the often criticized Buffalo City Schools.
Cerri entered the school for the first time two weeks before the semester began and met the staff only days before the first day of school. While trying to get acclimated in a new setting and battling to get assistance in areas of the school, Cerri received a disturbing surprise. Each year students who play sports must have an academic eligibility form approved by the principal in order to play. Student athletes' eligibility is based predominantly on their grades followed by attendance and classroom.
Lafayette High School Principal Naomi Cerri discusses the importance of academics:
When Cerri got the forms of the football team she looked at the player’s report cards and spoke with assistant principals about behavior. After the evaluation she found 12 of the team’s players to be academically ineligible to play.
For a football team the size of Lafayette’s (where most players have positions on both offense and defense), losing 12 players unfathomable.
“It was nothing I had planned. I had no idea it would happen,” said Cerri.
Although in the past, Cerri said, she is sure that students who were academically ineligible have not been reprimanded athletically, she was unwilling to turn a blind eye to the football team’s struggling teenagers. After weighing decisions she told the coaches what her plan was.
“I spoke with the coaches first and had the dialogue that needed to be had to have them understand how critically important it was,” she said.
Her plan was the forfeit Lafayette’s second football game versus rival school, Fredonia. The coaches and players didn’t take the news as well as she had hoped.
“It hasn’t been the best situation for everyone emotionally. I think it’s definitely taken a toll on them emotionally but things like that happen, it’s part of the process but in the end I think they will get it,” she said.
The forfeit resulted in a 0-2 loss on the record for the team. Cerri installed a policy for all sports players in which eligibility will be determined weekly via progress reports from teachers. The team has had two games since the forfeit and the football coaches have noted that the team morale is down.
The coaches aren’t the only ones seeing the negatives of having to forfeit a game while the season is underway. Darnay Carpenter, a mother of one of the football players was upset at the way the situation was handled,
“I understand it, but I would have stopped it before the first game. My son practiced from 9am-3pm since the summer just to have the second game cancelled.”
Carpenter was also worried about how the situation could hurt the students,
“All of them cried. A lot of them wanted to quit. I told my son ‘if you start it, you finish it’ we aren’t quitters, but for some of these kid their ticket out of the inner city is sports.”
Principal Cerri said her main concern is giving students an education, which, she says, is something that no one can take away from you while sports are just a privilege.
Cerri said since she enacted the weekly progress reports the teachers and administrators have noticed a tremendous difference in the student’s attendance, behavior and work ethic.
A Math teacher at Lafayette, Elizabeth Kent told the principal she had her full support,
“I have many of the football players in my classes. This is a huge motivation and I have noticed a huge change in work ethic.....some of them wouldn’t do any work, [football] is all they want to do, but [getting an education] is part of paying our dues as a member of society.”
While at a Lafayette’s football game at JFK a teacher from South Park school district approached Cerri to congratulate the principal on the bold move. Cerri said she’s been receiving positive messages from teachers outside the district as well as inside,
“[The teachers are] loving it. They’ll come to me and say ‘so and so’ has been working in my class.”
Cerri has made it mandatory for every sports player in the school to attend after school tutoring sessions designed by their coaches or advisors and instructed by students from Buffalo State College, Daeman College or University at Buffalo.
Since the weekly progress reports have began every student has been eligible to play in their respective sports. Cerri is confident that students, coaches and others in the district are beginning to understand why she is making the moves that she is and hopes it continues that direction.
“We are teaching them how to be better students, more well rounded. They are starting to realize ‘I have choices, options and decisions to make. I need to have an A plan a B plan and even a C and D plan, especially in this economy,’” Cerri said.
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