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Thursday, July 01, 2010

Ind. Law - "New law expected to increase appeals of IHSAA eligibility decisions"

Here is a long list of earlier ILB entries on cases involving the IHSAA.

Maureen Hayden had this long story in the June 29, 2010 Terre Haute Tribune Star. Some quotes [emphasis by ILB]:

INDIANAPOLIS — Student athletes denied eligibility after transferring schools will no longer have the option to go to court before exhausting an appeals process established by the state legislature a decade ago.

The new law, which goes into effect Thursday, requires student athletes ruled ineligible by the Indiana High School Athletic Association to seek relief through the state Department of Education review panel before they can file a lawsuit asking for the IHSAA decision to be overruled.

IHSAA Commissioner Blake Ress says he hopes the new law will serve to reinforce IHSAA rules that bar students from playing sports for up to a year if they transfer for “primarily athletic reasons.”

“If they’re told often enough that they’re playing outside the rules, maybe they’ll get the hint,” said Ress.

He said lawsuits filed in local courts have sometimes been successful in overturning IHSAA eligibility decisions because of what he called “politics” exerting pressure on the presiding judge.

“Everybody wants rules,” Ress said. “They just don’t want the rules to apply to them.”

The new law is expected to increase the number of appeals filed and puts the IHSAA in a likely battle with the state’s superintendent of public instruction, Tony Bennett, who wants barriers removed for students who want to transfer into a new school.

“We should always make the best interests of Indiana’s students our top priority,” Bennett said. “Each student should be entitled to attend a school that can provide for his or her individual needs – no matter the need or the reason.”

Members of the DOE review panel that will hear appeals to the IHSAA eligibility decisions are appointed by Bennett. Several new openings on the panel are coming up this summer. Those appointments could impact the outcome of the eligibility disputes.

Ress said about 3,000 student-athlete transfers occur every year and that 90 percent of them are approved by the IHSAA because they meet the organization’s transfer rules, which require a “bona fide” change of residence by the family of the athlete into a school district.

But within the past year, as Indiana school districts have begun to accept students living outside their districts under a new “open enrollment” plan that allows students to transfer schools without moving their residence, the number of transfers by student athletes has increased by an additional 500.

“It would be naïve to think that athletics don’t play a role in that,” Ress said.

Under current IHSAA rules, students may be barred from participating in interschool athletics if they make the switch to a new school to take advantage of a better sports program at the other school, or transfer because of a conflict with a coach.

But under Indiana’s relatively new open enrollment system, students can transfer to another school willing to accept them without giving a reason.

Bennett says the IHSAA has no business questioning a student’s decision to switch schools. Bennett said school choice without limits was the intent of the Indiana General Assembly, which passed the open enrollment law in 2008 that cleared the way for more students to transfer into another school district.

“Parents and students should make this decision,” Bennett said. “It should not be made by adults who are concerned about their own interests. I believe Indiana’s legislators demonstrated tremendous wisdom in creating an open enrollment policy, and I think all organizations should honor the General Assembly’s intent.”

A side-bar defines "primarily athletic reasoning":
When Indiana eliminated local funding for schools from local property taxes, it opened the way for open enrollment by eliminating the need for schools to collect tuition from students outside their school district who wanted to transfer. School districts responded by re-examining their transfer policies. But open enrollment presents a challenge to the Indiana High School Athletic Association. The IHSAA forbids a student from transferring for primarily athletic reasons.
The IHSAA’s Rule 19 defines “primarily athletic reasons” as including, but not limited to:

• transferring to obtain the athletic advantage of a superior, or inferior, athletic team, a superior athletic facility or a superior coach or coaching staff;
• transferring to obtain relief from a conflict with the philosophy or action of an administrator, teacher or coach relative to athletics;
• transferring to seek a team consistent with the student’s athletic abilities;
• transferring to obtain a means to nullify punitive action taken by the previous school

Source: Bylaws of the Indiana High School Athletic Association

Here is the new law - HEA 1168-2010 (PL 92-2010). It amends IC 220-26-14-5.5, 6 and 7. Note there is also a noncode SECTION 4, which:
Directs a high school athletics association in collaboration with the department of education to study and prepare a report to the general assembly by December 31, 2010 concerning the impact and the feasibility of allowing a high school student who attends a nonpublic nonaccredited school, a nonpublic school or a charter school that is not a member of an interscholastic athletic association to participate in high school athletics at a public high school that is a member of an interscholastic athletic association, including a study of practices in other states.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 1, 2010 09:52 AM
Posted to Indiana Law