For years, the rules for earning a varsity letter at Lehighton Area School District have lived entirely in the heads of individual coaches. This fall, the school board wants that to change, and a parallel conversation about recognizing academic achievement the same way is already underway.

Both were hot topics during last Monday’s board workshop meeting, with director Denise Hartley leading the charge on formalizing what is currently an entirely unwritten system.

“Right now, there is no clarification,” Hartley said. “If I wanted to look in the student handbook as a student or a parent to see what my child needed to do to obtain a varsity letter, what sports receive a varsity letter or what the criteria is, there’s nothing there. So I’m asking that we look at that, so students and parents all know what needs to be done.”

Currently, the district’s handbook says only that varsity letter criteria are established and communicated by each head coach. That leaves the standard entirely to individual discretion and, some board members noted, opens the door to inconsistency.

“The coaches can make their determination on favoritism,” one board member said. “Someday eliminating that would be nice.”

Superintendent Jason Moser said the goal is to put sport-specific criteria in writing before the fall season begins, while acknowledging that the standards will vary by sport.

“It’s not spelled out in the handbooks right now,” Moser said. “What we’re looking to do is actually put it in writing in one place for each program. Yes, there will be differences depending upon what the sport looks like and what the competition looks like, but having something down can avoid a whole lot of confusion and unhappiness later on.”

Board members discussed the kinds of sport-specific benchmarks that might be used such as quarters played in football, at-bats or innings in baseball, or matches in wrestling, and Moser said work would continue over the summer with the goal of having standards established before fall sports officially begin.

“I don’t want to do an extreme where within one season one program has it in place and others don’t,” Moser said.

Hartley proposed creating a separate “scholastic letter” to recognize academic achievement; a distinction she was careful to draw from the traditional varsity award.

“When I think of a varsity letter, I think of sports,” Hartley said. “But I think we do need to give an opportunity to the other students, to acknowledge them such as FBLA. I want to recognize the new groups, the new clubs, and acknowledge them and give them goals.”

Board member Heather Neff expressed support for protecting the distinction between the traditional varsity letter and any new academic award.

“Our athletes go above and beyond as well, and they are the best of the best athletes in our school district, and that varsity letter means a lot to them,” Neff said.

Hartley agreed the two awards should remain separate and serve different purposes.

Autumn Abelovsky, a Lehighton parent who addressed the board during public comment, offered a reminder that the issue of non-athletic recognition has a longer history than Monday’s discussion might suggest. She noted that band students do already receive a letter, a smaller version than the traditional varsity letter, and that the practice goes back decades.

“Going back to the 80s and 90s, this is how the school district worked,” Abelovsky said. “The clubs did get the smaller letter and were able to put the pins on.”

She also raised the practical stakes of varsity recognition for cheerleaders, noting that college programs, including Penn State’s cheer program, require applicants to document varsity-level participation.

“When a cheerleader is applying to college and (my daughter) would love to be a Penn State cheerleader, she has to show that she was a sideline cheerleader at the varsity level, and having that letter in her jacket helps in that process,” Abelovsky said.