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Second Half by MHSAA

Transfers 101

September 21, 2011

A recent blog (“Troubling Transfers”) brought us several responses where the writer had student-specific issues, to which we do not respond here. Questions about a particular pupil should first be addressed to the local school’s administration.  If the school needs help with the answer or wishes to prepare a request for waiver, MHSAA staff is ready to help.

One writer sought a list of the 15 exceptions to the automatic ineligibility of a transferring student.  Here are brief summaries (not the full rule):

Eight Residency Exceptions –

   1. Student moves with the people he/she was living with previously (full & complete).
   2. Student not living with parents moves back in with them.
   3. Ward of the Court, placed with foster parents.
   4. Foreign exchange student moves in with host family who resides in district.  Two semesters/three trimesters only.
   5. Married student moves into school district.
   8. Student moves with or to divorced parent.
 12. An 18-year-old moves without parents.
 13. A student resides in a boarding school.

Five School Status Exceptions –

   6. School ceases to operate, not merged.
   7. School is reorganized or consolidated.
   9. School board orders safety transfer or enrollment shift.
 11. Student achieved highest grade available in former school.
 15. New school established; student enrolled on first day.

Two Student Status Exceptions –

 10. Incoming first-time 9th grader.
 14. Expelled student returns under preexisting criteria.

In three cases (exceptions 8, 12 and 13), an Educational Transfer Form must be completed by administrators of both schools and the MHSAA before the student may participate.

In four cases (exceptions 2, 8, 12 and 13), the exception may only be utilized once by a student while enrolled in grades 9 through 12.

There is also a provision where a student may request a waiver at the subvarsity level for a 9th- or 10th-grade student who has never played any MHSAA tournament sport in high school.

I recognize this is all “un-bloglike,” but the topic of transfers brought some basic and general questions that we could answer here.
 

A Solutions Approach

July 13, 2015

I had not been to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, and I expected to see much change since my several visits before the flooding. What I discovered when I attended national meetings there recently was little change ... including most of the same sights, sounds and smells of years before. I expected the same of the national meetings ... “same-ol’ same-ol’.”

It has become tradition that the executive directors of the 50 statewide high school athletic associations meet twice during the annual summer meeting of the National Federation of State High School Associations in sessions separate from all other delegates to that large convention. It has also been customary for me to leave those sessions depressed as problem was heaped upon problem by the directors, with little attention to solutions.

However, between the two sessions this year, a small group of the executive directors talked about strategies to redirect the conversation; and the result of the second session in New Orleans was to develop a strategy for identifying and prioritizing the most significant problems of school-based sports, and then identifying and prioritizing the resources and alliances currently available, as well as those that could be developed through cooperative effort and strategic partnerships, to attack the most pressing problems.

The expertise to solve such problems has been in our room for years. What has been lacking is the commitment to a process that could move us from a group accomplished in citing problems and suggesting reasons for them to a group accomplished in working together to solve the most significant problems.

So, the “Big Easy” is and may remain pretty much as it always has been. But maybe future meetings of the National Federation, wherever they may be, will be undergoing substantive change.