|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Co-op amendment subject of special meeting
January 25, 2005
A special meeting of the Minnesota State High School League Representative Assembly will be held Monday, Jan. 31, 2005, at the League office in Brooklyn Center. The 9 a.m. special meeting was called by the League Board of Directors to take action on one proposed amendment to League bylaws that impacts cooperative sponsorship of League activities.
The Representative Assembly is the legislative body of the League. Under a new process for consideration of bylaw amendments, all proposals need to be first reviewed by the 16 local administrative region committees. These committees must vote to either pass the proposal on for Representative Assembly consideration and action, or reject it. Nine of the 16 committees must pass on each proposal before it will be presented for action by the Representative Assembly. The process calls for a single annual meeting of the Representative Assembly in May of each year.
However, one of seven amendments that was favored by a majority of the administrative region committees requires immediate Representative Assembly action so that placement of League member schools into competitive sections for the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years can be completed before the spring of this year.
The amendment that will be considered by the 48-member Representative Assembly on Jan. 31 concerns how the enrollment is determined if two or more Class A schools (schools with total grades 9-11 enrollment of less than 500) cooperatively sponsor a team and/or non-lifelong activity. It amends Bylaw 403. It states that the total enrollments of all of the schools participating in the cooperative sponsorship of the activity will be used to determine placement for competition.
This was the rule prior to the 2003-04 and 2004-05 competitive seasons. The League Board of Directors places schools into competitive sections every two years. However, Bylaw 403 now allows percentages of enrollment to be used for determining competitive class size. For example, if a co-op program includes 40 athletes from School A and only 10 athletes from School B, only 20 percent of the total enrollment of School B would be added to 100 percent of School A's total enrollment because School B is providing only 20 percent of the program's athletes.
Cooperative program enrollments are required before teams can be placed into competitive sections for the next two school years. If the Representative Assembly adopts the amendment on Jan. 31, the competitive section placement process for all three seasons will be completed by early March. If the amendment is rejected, competitive section placement for fall and winter activities can be completed by mid- to late-March, but the process will have to be repeated for spring activities after co-op participation numbers are submitted to the League office and not completed until late April or early May.
Superintendents of four schools - Dale Brandsoy of Blue Earth Area, Wayne Gilman of Maple River, Gregg Allen of Nicollet and Rick Linnell of St. Clair - and Les Zellman, activities director of St. James, submitted the Bylaw 403 amendment. Eleven of the 16 administrative region committees approved of the amendment, but only three of the eight Class A committees.
A competing amendment to Bylaw 403 failed 15-1. It proposed to use only the total single-gender enrollment of each school cooperatively sponsoring an activity. For example, if School A had 115 boys out of a total enrollment of 300 and School B had 75 boys of a total enrollment of 175, the enrollment figure to be used for competitive section placement in wrestling would be 115 plus 75 or 190.
Four other proposals also failed to gain majority approval by the administrative region committees: 1) a Bylaw 208 amendment that would have allowed athletes involved in individual activities to compete in non-school events during their high school season failed 9-7; 2) a Bylaw 111 amendment that would have allowed international students enrolled at boarding schools (Hillcrest Lutheran Academy in Fergus Falls, St. Croix Lutheran High School in West. St. Paul, St., John's Prep in Collegeville, or Shattuck-St. Mary's in Faribault) to be eligible for varsity competition failed 10-6; 3) a Bylaw 508 amendment that would have allowed the issuance and use of full football gear the first day of practice failed 8-8; and 4) adding an activity - boys' lacrosse - to the 500 bylaws also failed 8-8.
The only other amendment that garnered a majority 14-2 approval by the administrative region committees will expand the total number of quarters of participation allowed in football from five to six times the total number of regular season games. The rationale stated that small school football programs with limited numbers of players were restricted from substituting younger players in games where the scoring margin would become excessive. The Representative Assembly will consider this amendment at its May meeting.