IHSA Announcements

January 18, 2005

Public-Private Task Force Makes Recommendations to Board

The IHSA Public-Private Task Force voted today (Jan. 18) to forward several recommendations made by its subcommittees to the IHSA Board of Directors for consideration.  Some of the recommendations involve policy changes that can be approved by the Board itself, while others took the form of By-law amendments that must first work their way through the Association's Legislative Commission before finally facing a vote of the general membership.

The Task Force approved four proposals from the General Issues Subcommittee:

  1. A by-law amendment that would allow a student to transfer one time from and to any member school, without a change in residence, as long as the principals of both schools concurred with the transfer. Currently such a transfer would cause a  student to be ineligible for one year if the student moved from a public to a private school or from a public to another public school.
  2. A recruitment education initiative that could end up being a by-law proposal but at the least would become a component of annual informational meetings.
  3. A new policy that would require private schools to maintain student enrollment forms, developed by the IHSA, that would track the student's home public school district and the feeder grade school that he or she attended.
  4. A by-law amendment proposal that would allow a tuition-paying, incoming freshman to be eligible immediately at a public high school.  Currently such students are ineligible for one year.  At private schools, tuition-paying, incoming freshman are eligible.

The Task Force approved two proposals from the Classification Subcommittee:

  1. A review of IHSA Policy 19 (Criteria for Increasing the Number of Classes in IHSA Sports and Activities) by the IHSA's administrative staff and the advisory committees of the individual sports and activities.  The Classification Subcommittee will make its policy recommendations to the Board after gathering input from these groups.
  2. A proposal to add a new definition to the IHSA Handbook that would define a non-boundaried school as a school that can deny admission to students, or a school that cannot serve certain students due to its specialization in one area of education.  Examples of the criteria for admission to such a school could include entrance exams, test scores, interviews, grade reviews, or a lottery.  This definition would include all private, lab, magnet, and charter schools.

In addition the Task Force approved a subcommittee recommendation that the IHSA continue its existing policy of not allowing schools to “play up” by voluntarily choosing to play in a higher classification.

The Task Force rejected a proposal from the Multiplier Subcommittee that, if approved by the Board, would have created a tiered enrollment multiplier for all schools, public or private, based on the number of public high schools within the school's enrollment boundary.  For private schools, this number is based on the number of schools within the 30-mile radius established by IHSA By-law 3.030.  Among the private school members of the IHSA, this number ranges from 7 to 185 schools.  For most public schools, the number of public high schools within the enrollment boundary is, by definition, one.  However, for public lab, magnet, and charter schools, the number can be significantly higher.  The proposal would have established five different multipliers from 1.0 to 2.0 based on this figure.

The Task Force then asked the Multiplier Subcommittee to reexamine the issues involved  with an eye toward additional factors, including the size of the IHSA-established radius, the actual impact of population density on a school's enrollment as opposed to the potential impact, the effects of enrollment on IHSA tournament success, and the effect of special student populations on a school's enrollment.

The Board will hear the proposals from the Task Force at its next meeting on Monday, February 14.  The Task Force plans to meet again at least one more time, on Monday, April 11.