Former Kentucky Wildcat Jeff Sheppard was running an autograph tour with Louisville Cardinals’ Gorgui Dieng and Peyton Siva in Jefferson County Public Schools and the administrators did not know it was a direct violation of school policy.
WAVE3 News in Louisville has the story:
“I mean if it’s against policies they would of course have had no other options but to cancel it,” said Victoria Allen, a LPAS parent. “But I feel like it could have been something positive.”
PPS has already held a dozen of similar events at JCPS schools with Dieng and Siva. When parents at some of the schools started complaining about getting charged for players signatures, school administrators took a closer look and discovered the autograph sale was a violation of board’s rules against public solicitation in schools.
JCPS spokesman Ben Jackey said some of the principals thought the appearances would have been ok under another board policy, but the JCPS General Council determined it was not.
“When it came to asking our students to pay for autographs, that’s not in conjunction with policy, that’s not in conjunction with our strategic plan,” Jackey said. “And it really didn’t have an educational value.”
So how did it ever happen in the first place? Jackey said PPS Sports owner, former University of Kentucky basketball player, Jeff Sheppard, contacted many of the schools directly, bypassing administrators who may have known the rules prohibiting the practice of selling autographs on JCPS property.
Click here to read the entire article
My big question is why a former Kentucky great is running an autograph tour for Louisville players?
