Although wheelchairs were allowed on the Cortez Middle School track during Saturday’s Relay for Life fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society, future requests to use wheelchairs on the middle-school track apparently will meet with resistance from the Re-1 board of education.

Re-1 Superintendent Bill Thompson explained at the regular meeting of the board Tuesday that controversy surrounding the ban of wheeled devices from the track arose last week, when the school district was informed that by prohibiting wheelchairs on the track, the district was discriminating against wheelchair-users.

Despite the district’s strict policy regarding wheeled devices on the track, wheelchair-users lapped with other fund-raisers at the Relay for Life on Saturday.

"We went ahead and allowed it," said Thompson.

"After we’ve allowed it once, how do I go out there and tell a citizen that they can’t wheel their wheelchair around the track?" he continued.

Re-1 school-board President Steve Hinton explained that the district would avoid discriminating against wheelchair-users — by denying all requests for use of the track by groups that might include wheelchair-users.

"We’re not going to discriminate," Hinton said. "No one will use it. It’s the real world. I think it’s time for people to start being real."

Thompson stated that further requests would be met with resistance from the board.

He said, "We would have to approach (a request) with our policy and say the sign speaks for itself — no wheeled devices, because of the damage it can cause."

If anyone decides to challenge the policy, Thompson said, the district will have to consult an attorney to decide how to handle the situation.

The Re-1 school district has a strict policy against the use of wheeled devices on the track because wheels can force the rubber base, which is held together with latex, loose from the asphalt track.

"Our history with the track has been that if we observe someone using a wheeled device on the track, we ask them to leave," said Thompson. "We’ve never run into a situation that has been a wheelchair."

The debate over the use of wheelchairs for the fund-raising event was solved when the American Cancer Society agreed to sign an agreement stating that the organization would be accountable for any damage done to the track by wheelchairs.