No doubt happy to have newspapers reporting on something other than the July 7 pay-raise vote and associated controversies, Gov. Ed Rendell and state legislators nevertheless did the right thing late last week in mandating that all Pennsylvania school districts permit home-schooled children to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities.

It should not be necessary for the state to pass a law allowing home-school students to take part in these after-school activities. All the state's school districts on their own should recognize that these students deserve the opportunity to participate in these activities. All districts should understand that their responsibilities to young people do not stop at the classroom door. Sports and after-school activities can have an equal, if not greater, role in shaping a young person's character and preparing them for later life. The important socialization components of sports and after-school activities should not be denied to any students in the district — even those who do not attend classes in the district.

Unfortunately, 221 of the 501 school districts in the state do not view their responsibilities to their students in this way. And, by denying the nearly 25,000 students home-schooled in their districts access to sports and other after-school activities, those 221 districts were perpetrating an injustice — something the state should not permit.

The arguments to shift to a more enlightened policy that would allow the children of all taxpayers in the district to take advantage of sports and after school activities had been made repeatedly in recent years. Some times those arguments resonated with school boards and resulted in policy change, other times they did not.

Now, the state has stepped in and required that all districts do the right thing. It should not have been necessary, but by their stubborn refusal to serve all the young people in their district, combined with an apparent desire to punish certain parents and children for choosing the home-school option, the districts brought this state mandate upon themselves.

Rendell and the state legislature have done the right thing in ending the argument over whether public schools have a responsibility to all the children living within their borders. They do.