Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
He said it here, in 1858, in the Old State Capitol Building. A mere 147 years later, you wonder if he would say the same thing about the Illinois High School Association.
Anyone who heard the two-hour hearing the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee conducted Thursday in the current Capitol Building regarding the IHSA’s new enrollment multiplier would find it hard to deny the association is deeply split on the issue.
“You’ve got a real tiger by the tail,” Rep. Renee Kosel (R-New Lenox) told IHSA Executive Director Marty Hickman.
On one side are schools with traditional enrollment boundaries. On the other are “non-boundary” schools, mainly private schools, that under IHSA rules can attract athletes from up to 30 miles away.
The IHSA Board of Directors believes non-boundary schools have won a disproportionate share of state series titles because of that. So it voted 8-2 on March 19 to multiply the enrollments of non-boundary schools whose enrollments are 450 and above by 1.65 for purposes of slotting them into classes for state tournament participation, starting this summer.
That will push about two dozen schools from Class A to AA in two-class sports, where they will have to face the state’s larger schools. In football, which has eight classes, about 20 schools may move up.
Several state legislators and private school officials attacked the multiplier Thursday as discriminatory and a measure that could threaten private schools’ ability to draw students. Critics also called the measure a rush to judgment, one approved without sufficient study and despite an IHSA task force’s 10-8 vote against a multiplier.
Hickman argued that the IHSA has been trying without significant success to “level the playing field” for years and pointed to the fact that boundary schools have won only one Class A state title so far this school year. He denied the association is discriminating against private schools and said the task force ignored a survey that showed 70 percent of member schools supported a multiplier.
“This is about fairness to all our kids,” he said.
If there was common ground, it was hard to find it Thursday. Catholic school officials, in particular, believe their schools have been unfairly singled out, pointing out they suffer by comparison to most public schools when it comes to salaries and facilities.
“When we succeed, we’re penalized,” Belleville Althoff Principal Sister Jan Renz said. “When we win, we either illegally recruited or have gotten kids from some God-knows-where area who wouldn’t otherwise have come.”
It’s doubtful whether Thursday’s sound and fury will signify much. No bill has been introduced, so this was a subject matter hearing, a quest for information and a chance for critics to put some heat on the IHSA.
A bill may not be forthcoming. Neither Rep. Kevin McCarthy (D-Orland Park) nor Rep. Kevin Joyce (D-Chicago)–though both are Catholic school alumni and strong multiplier opponents–seemed eager to introduce legislation, though Joyce hopes to get a resolution passed instructing the state auditor general to look into the IHSA’s decision-making process.
Outside the legislative process, of course, lawsuits are always a possibility.
It’s very unlikely the IHSA will retrace its steps without being forced to. After all, just 123, or 16.4 percent, of its 752 member schools are non-boundary.
“You do the math for me,” Renz said. “How do I get a proposal passed by the IHSA?”
So the ball is in the IHSA’s court, and Hickman promised it plans to keep swinging. The hope here is that the swinging doesn’t just involve making sure the multiplier sufficiently reduces non-boundary schools’ success.
The IHSA needs to review the multiplier from top to bottom. Yes, the task force ignored the survey, but it spent months studying the multiplier issue, while the member schools voted on a brief question asking only if they would back a multiplier, with no details of how it would work.
The IHSA also needs to take a hard look at data it will gather about how far non-boundary schools’ athletes live from school.
It needs to satisfy private school concerns that there was a rush to judgment. Yes, majority rules, but when one side has such a strong majority, it needs to ensure the minority side believes it got a reasonably fair shake.
Private schools, meanwhile, need to understand that a 30-mile radius is a significant edge, something its representatives rarely seem to admit. That edge is why some tweaking of the rules is necessary.
The multiplier, though, should have been lower than 1.65 as an initial step. At the very least, the IHSA should now change its new rule to ensure no school will move up more than one class in football because of the multiplier. Last fall that would have affected just three schools anyway.
The worst thing would be for the IHSA to keep boosting the multiplier number if non-boundary success declines, but not enough to satisfy public schools. The 30-mile radius, after all, is not the only reason private schools do so well, and too much tightening might cause the IHSA to divide for good.
“You might force the hand of non-boundary schools to form their own association,” Joyce told Hickman.
That’s something almost no one wants.
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btemkin@tribune.com
