FHSAA EL7 Home Education Registration: Forms, Eligibility, and Submission

To register a home-educated student for a school sports team in Florida, complete the FHSAA EL7 form with your child’s identifying information and intended school, then submit it alongside four other required forms to the school’s athletic director before your child’s first practice or tryout. The EL7 is a one-page registration form, but it only works as part of a packet, and a missing signature or overlooked eligibility rule can hold your child out for a season.

What the EL7 Is

The full title of the form is “Registration Form for Home Education Student to Participate in Athletic Program at Non-Home Education School.” You can download it from the FHSAA’s home education forms page.¹ It’s filled out and signed by the parent. One EL7 is submitted per child, per school. If your child later moves to a different school for sports, a new EL7 goes to the new school.²

Pick the School Before You Fill Anything In

The EL7 asks you to name the specific school your child will play for, and once named, that’s the school your child represents. FHSAA Bylaw 9.2.2.1 gives home-educated students four places they can participate:

Any public school in the district where you reside, including charter and lab schools.
A public school in another district, if that school accepts students through Florida’s controlled open enrollment process under Section 1002.31.
Any FHSAA-member private school willing to accept your child for participation.
A home education cooperative that fields its own teams.

A student cannot be registered at more than one school at a time. Registering at two schools simultaneously makes the student ineligible and can force the team to forfeit contests the student played in.³

What the EL7 Asks For

The fields are short and factual. Fill them out carefully so nothing conflicts with the records your district already has on file:

The student’s full legal name and date of birth, matching the district’s records.
The school district of residence — the Florida county where you live and where your home education program is registered with the superintendent.
The specific school where your child intends to play.
The sport or sports your child wants to join.
The date your child’s home education program began.
Your signature and the date, confirming the information is accurate and that you understand the eligibility rules.

Small inconsistencies — a nickname instead of a legal name, a mismatched date — can slow the review, so cross-check every field against your other paperwork before you hand it in.

The Four Forms That Go With It

The EL7 alone will not clear your child to play. FHSAA requires five forms total for home-educated students: the EL7 plus four others.² Gather all of them before your first visit to the athletic office.

Form EL7V — Home Education Registration Verification

The EL7V confirms your child is legally registered as a home education student with the district school board. A district official has to sign it; you cannot sign it yourself. Florida law requires you to notify the district superintendent in writing within 30 days of starting a home education program, so your records should already be on file.⁴ If you haven’t filed that notice, the district can’t sign the EL7V and the whole packet stalls. The form is available on the same FHSAA home education page as the EL7.¹

Form EL2 — Pre-Participation Physical Evaluation

The EL2 is the medical clearance form, completed and signed by a qualified medical professional. Schedule the physical early. If it turns up anything that needs follow-up, you want time to handle it before practices begin.

Form EL3 — Consent and Release from Liability

Both parent and student sign the EL3. It acknowledges the risks of athletic participation and releases the school and FHSAA from liability. It’s valid for 365 calendar days from the most recent signature and is non-transferable, so a mid-year school change requires a fresh EL3 at the new school.

Form GA4 — Athletic Compliance Acknowledgment

The GA4 is an acknowledgment of FHSAA rules. It only needs to be completed once unless your child changes schools or changes sports. It isn’t on the home education forms page; ask the athletic director for a copy, or find it in the general FHSAA forms library.

Academic Eligibility You Also Have to Meet

Florida Statute 1006.15 sets the academic floor for all student athletes. Your child needs a GPA of 2.0 or above on a 4.0 scale, measured either in the previous semester or cumulatively. If the GPA falls below 2.0, your child has to sign an academic performance contract with the school board and governing association and meet its terms before playing again.⁵

Because home education programs don’t always produce a traditional transcript, the statute lets you and the school principal agree on an evaluation method. That can be a review of the student’s work by a certified teacher you choose, grades from correspondence courses, grades from a Florida College System institution or university or trade school, scores above the 35th percentile on a nationally normed standardized test, or any other method allowed under Section 1002.41. The evaluation must cover every subject in the home education program, not only the ones that produce a conventional grade.⁵ At the end of each semester, you certify to the school that your child still meets the minimum GPA.⁶

Age and Semester Limits

Two eligibility clocks run regardless of academic performance. Under FHSAA Bylaw 9.5.1, a student has eight consecutive semesters of eligibility starting from the semester they first enter ninth grade. After those eight semesters, the student is permanently ineligible, even if they sat out some of them. The clock does not pause.

There’s also an age cutoff. A student who turns 19 before September 1 of the current school year is ineligible for that year. Both limits apply to home-educated students the same way they apply to traditionally enrolled students.

Submitting the Packet

Once the EL7, EL7V, EL2, EL3, and GA4 are complete, along with academic records or evaluation documentation, deliver everything to the school’s athletic director. FHSAA bylaws require registration “before participation,” meaning before your child steps onto the field for any practice, tryout, or game.⁶

A few things that keep the packet from stalling:

Start with the EL7V. The district office may need a few business days to pull your home education file and sign.
Book the physical early so any follow-up fits in the calendar.
Keep the student’s name and dates consistent across every form and your district registration.
Ask the athletic director whether the school requires anything beyond the FHSAA packet. Some schools or districts ask for proof of health insurance or student accident coverage as a condition of participation; these aren’t FHSAA-wide mandates.

What Happens After You Submit

The athletic director reviews the packet, verifies signatures and dates, checks that your child lives in an eligible attendance area or qualifies through open enrollment, and confirms the academic documentation meets the 2.0 GPA threshold or the alternative evaluation standard. Your child also has to meet the same behavioral and performance standards the school requires of its traditionally enrolled athletes.⁶

There’s one more step the school usually handles internally: the student must be registered with the FHSAA office each year on a form provided by the association. Confirm with the athletic director that it has been done. Until that annual FHSAA registration is on file, your child is not cleared to compete in sanctioned games even if everything else is in order. If anything is missing, the athletic director will tell you what to fix; stay in touch during that window rather than assuming silence means approval.

One Boundary on Recruiting

If a coach, school employee, or anyone associated with a school’s athletic program pressures or recruits your child to attend that school in order to play, your child’s eligibility can be at risk. A student who accepts an impermissible benefit — something of value offered to get them to attend — can be declared ineligible at the recruiting school for up to a year, and potentially ineligible at all FHSAA member schools for the same period.⁷ Casual conversations at community events are fine. If anyone from a school is pushing your child to enroll there specifically to play, report it to the FHSAA rather than letting it ride.

1
Florida High School Athletic Association. Home Education Students EL07
2
Florida High School Athletic Association. Non-Traditional Students – Section: Home Education Students
3
Florida Department of Education. Florida High School Athletic Association Bylaws – Section: 9.2.2.1 Home Education and PEP Students
4
Florida Senate. Florida Code 1002.41 – Home Education Programs
5
Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 1006.15 – Student Standards for Participation in Interscholastic and Intrascholastic Extracurricular Student Activities; Regulation
6
Florida Department of Education. Florida High School Athletic Association Constitutional Bylaws – Section: 9.2.2.1.1 Home Education Student Requirements
7
Florida High School Athletic Association. Recruiting