Central Section Board of Managers considering membership for Kern Resource Center

Apr. 13—When the CIF Central Section Board of Managers meets on April 25, it will be faced with an unusual task: deciding whether to admit Kern Resource Center, which does not identify itself as a school, as a full participant in the realm of interscholastic competition.

"There is no other entity that's like ours," said Melissa Wheeler, the center's founder and director. "We're going to allow homeschool students to be part of an independent study program in order to allow them to play sports for us."

Kern Resource Center opened for its first year of instruction in the fall of 2022 on a campus at Snow Road and Mendota Street in far-northwest Bakersfield. It offers homeschooling parents in the area the opportunity to sign their kids up for a possible four days a week of academic instruction, from kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as rotating Friday activities such as service projects and opportunities to hone "survival skills."

Wheeler said students who wish to participate in athletics will be able to join in on these Fridays.

"I think the athletics portion will benefit our academic side and vice versa," she said. "I think you have to have both. A lot of these Christian local schools, they only go up through eighth grade and then you see the kids going off to other (schools) — typically the majority of them go off to public high school."

Kern Resource Center's website states that it teaches all academic courses "from a Christian worldview," in contrast to public education that "gives complete control to the government, indoctrinates children, stifles learning, and takes parental rights." Wheeler said she sees athletics as part of the center's mission to "bring kids to Christ."

The center asserts in online materials that it is "NOT a school" but rather a nonprofit organization seeking to "come alongside families to help educate their children," and "an educational alternative to public, private and charter schools."

It is indeed registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but it also possesses a county-district-school (CDS) code, meaning it is considered a school by the California Department of Education.

The organization appears in the California School Directory as a private, non-charter school called "Education Outside the Box," a subtitle used on the center's website. Its open date, meaning the day it filed a Private School Affidavit, is listed as March 14.

Asked about the center's official designation as a school, Wheeler wrote in a text message, "Technically, but we will only operate as a resource center, in order for families to maintain freedoms that public and private schools do not have."

Prior to the mid-March meeting of the Central Section's executive committee, which moved the issue forward to the Board of Managers, Assistant Commissioner Matt Sozinho had met with officials from the center to discuss the prospect of membership.

"He just gave us an idea of how to join, and we were asking questions as far as homeschooling and what that looks like for families that want to be able to participate in CIF," Wheeler said. "He asked specific questions more in relation to, because we are not quote-unquote a school, how we operate, whether we're offering in-person services ... He just wanted to make sure that we check-marked all of the boxes to be eligible to play with CIF."

Wheeler added that they did, and moved along in the process accordingly.

Kelly Jones, the section's coordinator of events and operations, said that state recognition was initially a sticking point for Kern Resource Center, which did not want to obtain a CDS code. Joining the CIF, however, requires one.

"Whatever they want to do versus what they are actually doing might clash a little bit," Jones said, "but they got a CDS code, so that means for us, I guess, that we can move forward with presenting them."

Wheeler's proposal for membership states that the center, which is slated to expand from 65 to about 200 students, wants to field teams in football, volleyball, track, soccer, basketball, softball and baseball. She told The Californian about coaches she has in place for several of those sports, including Keith Powell for football and Rick Shaw, who is also the athletic director, for basketball.

"I did not recruit anybody," Wheeler said. "People heard about what we were doing, and they literally walked through our doors and asked 'What sports are you guys going to offer?'"

Powell has experience at young programs, estimating he has helped about five schools get sports started up. He coached at Bakersfield Christian in the early days of its football team, and has worked in the homeschool domain, having previously led an 8-man team of homeschoolers called the Bakersfield Volunteers. He said it brings its fair share of challenges.

"The hard part is, if you're at a public school, you make an announcement, you change practice ... I call it a trapped audience," he said. "In the homeschool community, you don't have that, if kids are, in a sense, coming from all over the place."

He said he held a meeting and a couple of workouts to determine the viability of a Kern Resource Center team and got about 14 boys out. He advised Wheeler that they should play 8-man football for at least two years.

Wheeler said the school hopes to join the East Sierra League, and she and Jones said the issue of league affiliation will be broached at the Board of Managers meeting. (The ESL has similar membership to an 8-man football conference called the Central Sierra League.)

Other smaller governing bodies exist for California sports, but Kern Resource Center opted for the CIF.

"We want to be competitive," Wheeler said. "Athletics can really grow an entity."

The center is also angling for full membership (which allows for league and playoff participation), rather than the associate membership that Legacy Christian, which also combines homeschooling with in-person instruction, obtained last year.

"We definitely don't want to step on toes, and I look at Legacy as more of a partner," Wheeler said. "We have the same goals in line. I don't want any of the other Christian institutions to look at us as competition because we're really just trying to provide a service for these kids."

The Board of Managers will meet at the Bello Vita Venue in Visalia the morning of April 25 to vote on Kern Resource Center's status.

Reporter Henry Greenstein can be reached at 661-395-7374. Follow him on Twitter: @HenryGreenstein.