School Allows Everyone to Make Cheer Team After Parent Complains

A New Jersey high school has ended tryouts and will allow every applicant to join the cheer-leading squad, after a parent complained about her daughter not making the team.

The East Hanover Board of Education decreed that the cheer squad at Hanover Park High School will drop its standards and will allow all applicants to join the team, according to the New York Post.

The decision came after a parent complained that her daughter did not make the cut during tryouts.

Not all parents agreed with the new rule, and some spoke out against the policy at a recent school board meeting. But when confronted over the rule, the board threatened to put an end to the cheerleading program altogether rather than go back to requiring standards for admittance.

The school claimed it was being “inclusive” by eliminating past standards. In a statement the board also insisted that its new policy was in the “best interest” of the students.

“In order to facilitate a more inclusive program,” the board’s statement read, “the alignment between the various cheerleading squads would be modified to allow all interested students to be able to participate. This decision was made in the best interest of all students and was made to be as inclusive as possible.”

The school board also claimed that the change was made after “multiple appeals from several parents.”

Not everyone was pleased with the change. Cheerleader Stephanie Krueger was very unhappy with the new policy. “All my hard work has been thrown out the window,” she said during the board meeting.

“I tried my hardest,” Krueger added. “Now everything is going away because of one child who did not make the team, and their parent complained.”

Hanover sophomore Jada Alcontara agreed saying, “I came up here to state that I did not put in 18 months of work to lead up to this moment, just to be told it didn’t matter anymore.”

Board President Sean Sullivan allowed that the new policy may be revisited at a later date.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.