Effect of No-Fail Rule Lingers : Preps: With football playoffs coming up, coaches and athletes recall the lost opportunities.

Two days before Fairfax High’s scheduled first-round game in the Los Angeles City high school football playoffs last season, Coach Ron Price told the district athletic office that his team would have to forfeit.

The Lions simply didn’t have enough players to take the field.

His team clinched the playoff berth Nov. 17, 1989, with a 4-5 record, but Price learned three days later that nine of his players had lost their eligibility for failing to meet the district’s academic requirements.

“I’ve been coaching on and off in the district since 1969, and I’ve never had to forfeit a game before,” said Price, 53. “It was a very tough thing to do. Some people were angry with my decision. But I didn’t have enough starters left to field a competitive team. We basically would have used a junior varsity lineup. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”

Losing players before the playoffs is nothing new to most City coaches, who became accustomed to such misfortune when the Board of Education of the Los Angeles Unified School District adopted the “No pass, no play” rule in 1983.

Under the rule, any student in grades four through 12 who failed a class or fell below a “C” average was prohibited from participating in any extracurricular activity. Grading periods covered 10 weeks.

That changed last January when mounting pressure from coaches and parents forced the school board to overturn the rule. Students now can keep their eligibility if they maintain a 2.0 grade-point average, even if they fail one or more classes.

“The feeling is that we wanted to keep more kids in school, and extracurricular activities help kids stay in school,” said Julie Korenstein, the board member who proposed the change. “They need to do well in academic subjects, but activities are important. I think we should help kids if they fail and not give them double punishment.”

Said Rita Walters, who authored the no-fail rule: “Of course, I’m upset about the change. The idea was to put emphasis on academics, and coaches didn’t like that. But school is about education and not about sports and drama club and band. We seem to lose sight of that.”

Grades are checked every 10 weeks, and if a student loses eligibility, he or she has 10 weeks to improve. The first grading period of the fall semester occurs during the opening week of the football playoffs, which begin in two weeks.

The effect of the rule change is not yet clear because the district has not provided any new statistics on ineligibility rates. There is plenty of emotion on the subject, however.

Opponents of the no-fail rule said it would not motivate students. They said the punishment was too severe for a single failing grade, and that it discouraged students from taking tougher courses.

There are plenty of examples:

--Fairfax quarterback Rahim Muhammad is enrolled in the school’s AE (academically enriched) program and has a 2.5 grade-point average. He received an “F” in honors’ English last fall that cost him an opportunity to finish the season.

“Sometimes there’s a class you just can’t get by,” Muhammad said. “I think if you can make up for one bad class with other classes, you still should be able to play. I hated missing the playoffs. It really hurt.”

--Darryl Stroh, Granada Hills football coach, tells of a player several years ago who got all A’s but was struggling in trigonometry.

“He sweated it out the whole semester and ended up getting a ‘D.’ He shouldn’t have had to be in such a predicament.”

--Then there is Roger Cortez, a senior at Belmont High, who hasn’t played organized football for two years because he failed a biology class his sophomore year and a typing class his junior year. His grade-point average is slightly above 2.0.

“I would go to games and watch and wish I could be playing. Football is very important to me, and I like playing sports. Being out really hurt,” said Cortez, a starting tight end for the Eagles this season. “But I kept in shape and tried to do better in the classroom. Right now, I’m not failing any classes. I didn’t like being punished that way, though.”

But the opponents have also unintentionally fueled some supporters’ claims.

Muhammad, for instance, sounds as if the no-fail rule did provide some motivation when he says: “The no-fail rule was really bad for me . . . but I vowed never to let the same thing happen to me again. I’m not failing any of my classes this year.”

Price said that the rule put too much pressure on coaches to consider academics, but some supporters of no-fail would probably be glad to hear that.

“Sometimes you wonder if you’re a coach or a parent,” Price said. “It isn’t easy keeping students eligible. It takes a lot of patience and time. The role of the coach certainly has changed a lot over the last few years.”

The no-fail rule has received little support from Hal Harkness, district athletic commissioner.

“The only justification of that rule is that it was there for punishment to those youngsters who failed,” Harkness said. “If the rule was made to motivate youngsters, then it should have been changed a long time ago because it never did that. This rule did not motivate.”

Not all coaches agree that the change is a good one. Randolph Simpson, Manual Arts basketball coach, was one of the no-fail rule’s strongest proponents.

Manual Arts, located across the street from the Coliseum, traditionally fields some of the City’s top basketball teams. The school has special study halls and tutoring programs for athletes. It also has its own grade checks every two weeks. The basketball team has not lost a player to academic ineligibility in the past four years.

“What this decision does is say to the kids that it is OK for them to fail a class and to slack off,” Simpson told The Times last January. “Everyone should be pushing harder with an attitude that they have to get it done, because it is not going to be that way for them when they move into the real world.”

The no-fail rule was overturned in a 5-2 vote of the school board last January. Walters and Leticia Quezada dissented.

When the no-fail rule was in effect, eligibility losses from the district’s 49 high schools ranged from a low of 16.2% in the spring of 1984 to a high of 21.8% in the fall of ’87. Those who lost eligibility because of the no-fail rule fluctuated between 5% and 6%. Statistics weren’t compiled for the 1988-89 school year because of the teacher’s strike.

Walters said she would like to get the no-fail rule back on the district agenda, but acknowledges it might have to wait for a different board makeup.

“There is a future for this rule here in Los Angeles,” said Walters, who represents South Central Los Angeles. “People said this rule hurt students. That could only be true if they believe that students are incapable of learning.”