Proposed legislation that would split public and private schools in Pennsylvania high school state playoffs is really a Trojan horse for the bill's true impact -- basically, allowing every public school in the state to recruit transfers just as hard as private schools can.
A year after Pennsylvania's state legislature held a hearing on the issue of private-school (or, technically, non-boundary school, to include charters) domination of state championships, state Rep. Aaron Bernstine, a Republican from suburban Philadelphia, on June 11 introduced what he called the Parity in Interscholastic Athletics Act. Essentially, it would amend a 1972 law (passed at the behest of Catholic schools shut out from public-school competition) that required the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletics Association (PIAA) to accept public and private members.
Both kinds of schools would still a part of the PIAA. But they no longer would compete against each other in the state playoffs -- initially there would be separate private and public state tournaments in football, baseball, softball, girls’ and boys’ basketball, girls’ volleyball, and girls’ and boys’ soccer, with an option to add other sports later. Then, the public and private champions would play each other in a super-championship event.
While Catholic schools and an alliance of public-school superintendents support this legislation, the PIAA is against it, in part because it gives "18% of private schools being guaranteed 50% of the championship entries promotes inequities in post-season opportunities," the organization said in a news release. Then again, at least in boys and girls basketball about 70 percent of the titles are won by private or non-boundary schools, so is this really that big a change? (The PIAA also cites "no educational purpose" to the super-championship, and worries about scheduling and player safety.)
State high school associations have wrestled for decades with how to handle increasing postseason domination from private schools, with such solutions as multipliers (say, counting one student as 1.5 to move them up to a more difficult class) and success factors (moving schools up or down based on championships or other levels of postseason advancement.) This issue has been exacerbated other trends that have allowed schools to extend beyond traditional borders to attract athletes: charter schools (which still count as public schools in Bernstine's bill), and school choice.
Some states have decided, in this environment, to switch rather than fight. In states such as Florida and California, instead of requiring athletes to sit out six months or year for an athletic-related transfer, athletes can pretty much go wherever they want as long as they follow all the paperwork rules. Basically, they're the youth sports version of marijuana legalization -- everybody's going after transfers anyway, so it's cheaper and easier to get with the times, even if you risk disappointment from some that you're not pretending all is pure.
Also, in a school choice environment, if you're saying any student can go to any school for any reason, how can you say, except sports?
And that's where the true impact of Bernstine's bill comes popping out of the Trojan horse, with a similar reaction of surprise. Here is what Bernstine's hometown newspaper, the Ellwood City (Pa.) Ledger, had to say:
But perhaps most surprising is the decision to use HB1600 to also legislate transfers. In fact, the bill would eliminate the transfer rule. As long as a student met the initial eligibility requirements upon transferring, he or she would be immediately eligible. In-season transfers would be more restricted, but still permissible.
That Bernstine put the transfer language in his bill is only a surprise if you haven't done a cursory look at his record, and his Twitter feed. Berstine is a staunch supporter of school choice; he also has co-sponsored legislation that would increase tax credits available for students to attend the school of their choice.
Lately, Bernstine's Twitter feed has been on fire about athletes who were ordered to sit out games because their transfers were deemed athletics-related by the PIAA or its affiliated, district-level entities. His tweets included him tagging one of the affected athletes to let him know he had an ally in the state legislature:
@NahkiJohnson I’m sorry what they are trying to do to you. I’m trying to fix it in Harrisburg, but some public schools are talking about how great the @PIAASports transfer rule is. We will keep at it to protect students like YOU!
— Aaron Bernstine (@AaronBernstine) June 20, 2019
Today, two children were harmed by the #WPIAL because of the decisions that adults and @PIAASports made. Failure for the legislature to act on this is an atrocity. https://t.co/nM2RQmzLco
— Aaron Bernstine (@AaronBernstine) June 21, 2019
I can't handicap whether Burnstine's bill has a chance of passing, but I will say this: my idea of solving this issue by grouping schools by their athletic aspirations rather their enrollment, as the NCAA does, it still very much available.
