As more Charlotte high schools forfeit football seasons, it’s time to change the rules
You may have heard that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has had three football teams forfeit entire seasons due to eligibility issues in recent weeks.
Players were living out of district, sometimes outright lying about where they lived. One school had nearly a dozen players from three states living in three houses.
It’s not new.
Eligibility, and student transfers, have long been an issue in CMS, dating back as far as the 1950s and ‘60s. But Mecklenburg County is not alone. Eligibility and transfers are issues in most large school systems in North Carolina and the nation. Travel basketball and 7-on-7 football has perhaps increased the frequency, as star players — and sometimes travel coaches — learn what it’s like to play together in the summertime and try to find ways to continue during school ball, too.
CMS has spent countless hours and dollars fighting a problem that is hard to stop. The rules are full of gray areas that allow parents, particularly those of means, to skirt around them. Part of the issue is that the rules are complex and difficult to understand. Part of it is that there is too much responsibility placed on athletic directors in Charlotte who also have to teach classes.
They can’t follow hundreds of kids home to find out if they’re really living where their paperwork says. And we are not chasing down parents and students who skirt rules to get into choice academic programs at schools outside of their attendance zone, and that certainly goes on, too.
I applaud new CMS athletic director Ericia Turner for announcing an action plan last week to educate coaches, parents and administrators about athletic eligibility and parent communication with athletic staff.
But the bigger issue is that CMS needs to reset its rules.
It needs to allow open enrollment for athletics.
It’s something that former Garinger High athletic director Tony Huggins, a former state championship-winning basketball coach at Independence, has long advocated for.
“What CMS should do, in my opinion,” Huggins said, “is allow ninth graders to go to any school they want to go to, if their parent can get them there, as long as there is room at the school. And once you get to that school, that’s it, regardless of whether you move. Any change and you have to sit out one year. That will help transferring and moving around. You have got so many people now saying, ‘I can use this address,’ and bounce around and think it’s OK.”
Huggins knows his idea to penalize any transfers is tough, but he stands by it.
“If you move, you could circumvent the rule if we allowed it,” Huggins said. “That is, if you have the means to do it. But what about the poor mother, or (the) one-income family who has two kids and ... (they don’t) have the money to move? Because you have the money, that makes it right?
“That’s why I say a one-time transfer. Once you go there and want to leave, you sit out 365 (days). Everybody can’t go to Chambers or Hough. You can only take in so many kids. By allowing people to say, ‘Well, I’ll just go buy another house in that district,’ that’s just the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.”
Forsyth County Schools has the type of policy Huggins is describing, a choice program. There’s a several-week window each year for parents to apply to go to any school within the county, provided that school has room. The Forsyth plan is not specifically for athletics, county athletic director John Sullivan told me Monday morning, but he said it’s a policy that has been in place “for a long time.”
Sullivan said he hasn’t seen “star athletes” regularly be given seats in schools ahead of other athletes or regular students. Forsyth has no limits on how many times you can transfer, but what Sullivan often sees are fringe athletes moving, looking for playing time more than anything else.
“It’s usually a kid trying to find that starting position,” he said. “That’s what we see. All of sudden, freshman year he wasn’t starting at running back and he wanted to try somewhere else. We have had kids move three or four times trying to find that starting position.”
In CMS, a plan like this, or like the one Huggins describes, could work. But I would focus it here on athletics only, just like the NCAA focuses only on athletics for colleges. High school sports are reaching that point.
Here’s my plan for CMS, in three steps:
1. Allow open enrollment. In ninth grade, parents can go to any CMS school for athletics provided that school has room to take them and is not displacing a student who lives in the zone. Schools would be allowed to host athletic open houses for a set day or days, arranged in a manner to avoid conflicts, so parents could attend at multiple schools.
The first year the plan is implemented, students going to any grade would be given a one-time exception to potentially change schools. After that, the rule would only apply to incoming ninth-graders or transfers from outside the district.
If you choose to attend a school outside your attendance zone, you are responsible for transportation.
2. Allow a one-time transfer after ninth grade, but the principal of the current school and new school both have to sign off on it, along with the ADs. Any additional transfer, for any reason, would trigger sitting out for one year.
3. Athletic directors would be full-time positions without any classroom responsibilities.
What’s your solution? I welcome your responses.
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
