CRESTVIEW HILLS, KY (FOX19) -
The
Dixie Heights cheerleading squad finished 8th in the nation this past weekend
at Disney World in Orlando.
On Thursday, their coach was fired.
Two weeks ago, the
dance team went to Richmond, Kentucky to compete for an event and afterwards, their coach was also fired.
Sources
in the Kenton County schools told FOX19 all school trips have to go through the
following procedures: If the trip is over 50 miles from school, if it's an overnight
trip, if it's out of state, in order for it to be a school sanctioned event, the
trip has to be put on the county's school board meeting agenda. It then has to
be heard at a board meeting, approved, and an administrator has to go with the
team.
None
of those procedures happened with either team, according to sources, yet some of the
students even knew about them.
"We were told that if your event
was over 50 miles away, out of state or overnight, you had to get it approved by
the board, and we had never done that before," said dance team member Zoe
Becerra. "We were told that we had to get district buses, which we did for every
competition so the school was aware that we were going to a competition."
However, school
officials say a team can go as a recreational team and not be
affiliated with the school. That's what the parents we talked with thought
happened.
"We had to go independently because the school system has a rule
that says we have to have an administrator go with us if we go as Dixie Heights
High School," added Amy Miles, a parent of a cheerleader. "We were unable to
find an administrator to go, therefore, we were told we had to go as an
independent group which we believed we had done."
However,
if you look on the website of the National High School Cheerleading Championships, it's clear the team was registered through the high school
under 'Medium Varsity Division I', and reads the team that finished in 8th
place is ‘Dixie Heights High School'.
Parents
nonetheless are upset.
"They came together as a team in April. They've
worked since May for this one common goal," said one parent. "This is very,
very disheartening. And then to have the coaches fired on Senior Night is
probably the most traumatic thing to happen to these girls."
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