This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The good news is that, apparently, the Utah Board of Education has solved all the problems the state's public, charter and private schools are having with funding shortfalls, teacher turnover, achievement gaps and digital divides.
Otherwise why would its members spend so much of their own, their staff's and so many other educators' time fiddling around with the rules governing the transfer of student athletes from one school to another? When there has been no serious suggestion made that there is anything wrong with the rules as they stand?
The effort to muck around in matters that are better left to the Utah High School Activities Association would be at least a little bit understandable if the state school board members had solved all of their — our — other problems and had too much time on their hands.
Or perhaps it is just a matter of the members of the board of education feeling threatened by the fact that someone else has a power they don't have.
The UHSAA, like the school administrators, coaches and athletes it serves, is rightly protective of current rules that discourage student-athletes from changing schools mid-career. Without such limits, they rightly fear that the whole atmosphere of high school sports will change from one that can at least claim to encourage discipline and teamwork to one that pushes coaches and schools to launch the kind of recruiting wars that flow from a win-at-all-costs mentality.
The current rule says athletes who have established eligibility at one school must obtain a waiver from the UHSAA in order to switch schools. Such waivers are only to be granted in cases of personal hardship or family relocation.
The rule that the school board gave preliminary approval to Friday would end the requirement for individual waivers, and set general rules for transfers that, on their face, aren't that different from the UHSAA's guidelines.
The main problem with that is that it would establish a troublesome precedent for the political school board to fiddle around in an area where another group, in this case the UHSAA, has the mandate and the expertise to rule.
It is as if a school board decided that the basketball goal should be eight feet high, rather than 10, or that football teams should put 13 players on the field at a time instead of the traditional 11. Not for any logical reason, but just to throw their weight around.
The school board needs to back off from this one, and spend its time on the many problems that are its responsibility.