We homeschooled our two younger kids, but I’m not getting my knickers in a twist about this.
I guess I don’t see the reason to be upset with a company that has the right to promote their business as they see fit. I see it more as whinning than anything else. I think you are correct in that it was meant as a donation to a school rather than someone’s home thus the exclusion of the homeschoolers.
I do think they need to pay closer attention to which ever entity they have hired to do their website promotions. They may need to hire a homeschooler for that chore....
My homeschool support group has a basketball team that competes with other private school teams here in the Tulsa area and this equipment would be a welcome addition to our team!
One of players from our girls team got a full basketball scholarship to a local university this past semester...they pulled her out of the middle of her senior year of high school and started her in college on full scholarship!
Not all support groups are small...at one time our group had 150 families (as big as some rural districts here in Oklahoma) and just a couple of weeks ago we had 54 graduating seniors.
A clause saying “Homeschooled students must be part of a sports co-op.” or something to that effect would’ve been reasonable. Excluding them all together is just ridiculous.
When this story came around the homeschool email loops this past weekend, several homeschool parents saw no reason to take offense at this promotion, either, although others did.
IMHO, the company messed up by not carefully selecting the right words. I used to work in sales and marketing, and I wrote/edited/proofread copy for ads and brochures. Never, ever, ever use negative words (such as “no” or “not”) in an advertisement. You’re supposed to put a positive spin on everything.
Instead of writing, “No home schools will be accepted,” the company would not have angered so many people so much so quickly if it had simply left out that line. It wasn’t even necessary to add that line because the policy was covered already in the previous line: “...children who attend elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6...”
Let’s put it this way: They didn’t go out of their way to add: “Entries for children in grades 7 or above will not be accepted.” For some unexplainable reason, they went out of their way to add the line about homeschooled students. Those six little words messed everything up for them, imho.
At most, they should’ve buried the policy in the small print, and still they should’ve written it politely: “We regret that entries from homeschooled students cannot be accepted into this particular contest, but we look forward to including homeschoolers in future promotions.” There. So simple.
I think heads are going to roll in their marketing department... lol. I can hear the screaming now. (In fact, I remember clearly how it usually went down.) ;-)