Big spring meeting ahead for GHSA

A curveball was thrown at the GHSA executive committee meeting Monday.

The issue of student-athlete transfers wasn’t on the agenda. In fact, the meeting at the Macon Marriott City Center was supposed to be routine: a couple of appeals, a couple of tweaks to sport-specific bylaws and a realignment of the track and field championships that never made the floor after being defeated in the track and field committee. That was about it.

But during the portion of the meeting when members of the executive committee can introduce new legislation, a proposal was raised that required an immediate vote.

The question? Whether to immediately suspend Bylaw 1.62(b), which permitted private, charter or magnet school students to change schools -- and immediately become eligible for varsity competition -- if they moved into another school zone within the same county.

There was a lot of debate concerning this question, mostly having to do with what things would mean if the bylaw, which created a loophole for easy student-athlete transfers, were to be suspended.

It was easy to become confused during the debate. After the meeting, I spent some quality time with the online version of the GHSA white book, the publication that contains the organization’s constitution and bylaws. It took several reads through that section to completely figure out what the GHSA’s transfer regulations were.

In reality, the suspension of the single bylaw is a vehicle in which to bring about a larger conversation within the executive committee -- and the eligibility committee in particular -- about the GHSA’s bylaws concerning transfers. The motion that passed included a directive for the subject to be discussed during the spring meeting in April.

Transfer rules -- and the issue of competitive balance between public and private schools in general -- are hot topics with a number of state high school associations. State associations are trying to keep the playing field as level as possible in terms of athletics in an era when open enrollment and charter schools are being encouraged as ways to improve education.

A Cleveland.com/Cleveland Plain Dealer story from May provides a thorough rundown of what states are doing in terms of enrollment multipliers, both for private schools and for other factors, such as the success a program has enjoyed.

In states such as Ohio, where there is a strong tradition of Catholic education and where open enrollment is permitted, the state association has tried more than once to implement an multiplier that incorporates service area, financial well-being of the school population and success in athletics, among other factors -- a multiplier more complex than the 1.5 multiplier the GHSA used for a few years but abandoned. It took the Ohio state association four years to pass it, and it will be fully implemented for the 2016-17 school year.

The Florida High School Athletics Association, meanwhile, has been the subject of quite a bit of legislative action. The Florida Legislature has directed the FHSAA to liberalize its transfer policies as part of an open enrollment push.

With the Georgia Legislature bringing back its high school athletics committee under Senate Bill 288, GHSA officials know they are being watched, as well.

The issue is a dilemma for state officials. On one hand, they want to preserve competitive balance, to keep a lid on recruiting and to maintain the concept that high school teams play with the student-athletes they already have at the school, not the student-athletes they can lure in from elsewhere. But there is also the concept of school choice, where parents should be allowed to pick the best school for their children and to be able to change schools if their original choice is no longer a good fit.

With charter schools starting to take off in Georgia because of changes in state law, the transfer issue will be one that grows. And the GHSA executive committee took the first step this week toward a thorough review of that issue.

We’ll find out more when they meet again in April.

Contact Ron Seibel at 744-4222 or rseibel@macon.com

This story was originally published September 18, 2014 at 4:25 PM with the headline "Big spring meeting ahead for GHSA ."