Lawmakers Reassess Athletic Transfers In First Interim Of The Year

School athletic directors are asking for a change to high school athletic transfer rules that they say have created competitive imbalances across high school sports.

High school sports have been up in the air for the last two years as high school athletes have been able to transfer from one school to play for another. School athletic directors are asking for a change.

David Viands, president of the West Virginia athletic director’s association, told members of the Joint Standing Committee on Education Tuesday evening that student athletic transfers have exploded over the past two years. 

“We went from one time transfer before the ninth grade year with a possible transfer back to the home school, to now, where student athletes can transfer at any time,” he said. “What we’re seeing as a result of that is a very large increase in transfers statewide. 2023 432 statewide transfers for Fall sports, 2024 was 433.”

Viands said transfer data is not available for 2022 or prior because the state did not have a reason to track the small number of transfers statewide.

In 2023, the passage of House Bill 2820 allowed student athletes to transfer after their freshman year of high school and maintain eligibility to play. Gov. Jim Justice did not sign the bill, and instead allowed it to become effective 90 days from passage.

Viands said many of the transfers are now upperclassmen.

“When students are allowed to transfer in or out, they’re displacing student athletes that are in that community and have been in that community for a long time,” he said. “Increased transfers have led to competitive imbalances, disparate between teams based on age and experience.”

Viands asked lawmakers to consider legislation that allows athletic directors, principals and other stakeholders to work together to create a more equitable rule.

“We really like (House) Bill 5011 from last year,” he said. “There’s probably some wiggle room within that. If people don’t like that and they want a little bit more freedom, I think one thing that we really, really need to get away from are high numbers of junior and senior transfers that really puts an imbalance into competitive balance. It throws it all out of whack.”

Del. Wayne Clark, R – Jefferson, said he has two 4A high schools in his small district and has seen the issues with the new transfer rule firsthand.

“All the kids live and play youth sports all together, and we are seeing kids moving with the program, and as the program is moving, one school is getting better at this sport than others,” he said. “We are seeing exactly what we thought we were going to see with this transfer portal in place, and I strongly suggest that we look at that this session.”

Not all lawmakers were on board with changing the current rule, however. Del. Jimmy Willis,R – Brooke, questioned the impulse to curtail students’ freedom.

“Why should we as a legislature tell a kid not to go to a school that might give him or her a better opportunity, or might just fit what they’re trying to do?” he said.

Legislators will convene for a delayed session Feb. 12 following the inauguration Jan. 13.

FAFSA Issues, College Going Rate And More Presented To LOCEA

A change to a federal financial aid form for college students is having major ripple effects through West Virginia’s higher education system. 

A change to a federal financial aid form for college students is having major ripple effects through West Virginia’s higher education system. 

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) unlocks both federal and state financial aid for students but a recent attempt to simplify the form has caused delays for college applicants across the country.

“At this point this year, we have six million students who have filled out a FAFSA,” said Sarah Tucker, chancellor of the Higher Education Policy Commission. “At this point last year, we had 17 million, this is across the country. So we have a significant deficit right now that we’re trying to make up and trying to figure out exactly what’s going on and how best to help our students.”

Tucker told an interim meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability Sunday the Student Aid Index (SAI), which determines student need, is now being determined by a new interface between the IRS and the federal Department of Education that is not working correctly. Further delays occur because users of the new system are not notified of errors until after the form has been submitted.

Tucker told the commission the faulty SAI formula is causing delays for the state’s educational programs as well.

“I need to know how much money the federal government is going to be giving to all of our students in order to know what our award is going to be for West Virginia Invests,” she said.
“We’re really sort of stuck in limbo until this functionality gets fixed.”

The Higher Education Grant Program, West Virginia Invests and PROMISE Scholarships are all currently delayed. 

Nationally, West Virginia is faring slightly better than average with the new FAFSA. As of last month, more than 6,000 seniors across the state have filled out the form, a number Tucker credits to hundreds of FAFSA workshops the HEPC and other organizations have hosted.

“We’re actually ranking 20th in the number of high school seniors who have completed the FAFSA,” she said. “The West Virginia Department of Education has done a lot of work as have all of our institutions in trying to do FAFSA workshops to make sure that our students know how to fill out those forms.”

Tucker said West Virginia Invest and PROMISE may revert to awarding the same amounts as last year without adjustments to ensure students are not further delayed.

“I think that may be where we end up because I don’t want to keep stringing students along,” she said. “I want to do the best we can to make sure that they know that they can go to college. Our college going rate is finally ticking up. We have this great momentum.”

College Going Rate

The oversight commission also heard a report on the state’s college going rate from Zornitsa Georgieva, director of research and analysis for HEPC. She highlighted a one percent increase in post-secondary enrollment from 2022 to 2023, including enrollment in trade programs or other career and technical pathways.

“For the class of 2023, the college going grade is 47.4 percent,” Georgieva said. “We’ve had more than 7,900 high school graduates continue into some kind of post-secondary education this year. I think that really speaks for the hard work of high school staff, high school counselors, teachers, our staff in our secondary system, as well as post-secondary institutions and staff that works around outreach. And providing information about financial aid.”

In 2021 the national immediate college enrollment rate was 62 percent, which puts West Virginia 15 percent below the national average. “Immediate college enrollment” is the metric used by the National Center for Educational Statistics and looks at students who enrolled in a post-secondary institution the fall after graduation. 

Georgieva said when looking at the 12 months after graduation, including spring enrollments, West Virginia’s college going rate jumps to 49 percent. Rates differ from county to county, and 36 of 55 of West Virginia’s counties increased their college going rate year over year.

Benchmarks and Screeners

As part of House Bill 3035 – also known as the Third Grade Success Act – that passed last year, screeners or benchmark assessments must be administered at the beginning of the school year and repeated mid-year and at the end of the school year to determine student progression in reading and mathematics kindergarten through third grade.

Sonya White, state deputy superintendent, presented the results of the mid-year screeners to the commission.

“Overall, we were encouraged by the results, we had a decrease in the number of students… who needed that intensive intervention,” she said.

Even accounting for regular academic gains in the first half of the school year, White said the need for intensive intervention decreased from the start of the year to mid-year. She said the screeners are also identifying new students that need intensive interventions and are getting the help they need.

“On the front side are the literacy results,” White said. “We had an average decrease of 5.4 percent of students that needed intervention in grades K through three, and an average of 6 percent of the students in grades four through eight were scoring in the lowest category.”

White presented even higher decreases in intensive intervention for mathematics, “with an average of 6 percent for K through three and an average of 8.1 percent for four through eight.”

Del. Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, expressed concern at some of the numbers that showed an increase in the need for math intervention between first and second grade.

“Do we have schools looking at why there might be that big change from only 17 percent initially in first grade up to almost 40 percent when they get the second?” he said.

White cautioned that the state is still in its first year of collecting the data but theorized that those numbers could be a result of lowered learning opportunities three years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are being proactive,” she said. “We are also looking at getting more detailed data for each section so we know what pieces of mathematics are struggling with.”

Policy 7212

Earlier in the meeting, legislators heard a brief description of changes to Department of Education Policy 7212. The policy applies to the transfer of students, both inside and out of their county of residence. 

Student transfers became a point of contention this past fall after legislation passed during the 2023 regular session changed eligibility rules for student athletes after transfer. Gov. Jim Justice and others urged the legislature to revisit the issue during this year’s legislative session, but no action was taken by the legislature.

The proposed changes to Policy 7212 include significant clarifications of the requirement for county boards of education to implement an open enrollment policy for nonresident students, including a new allowance for boards to revoke applicants for chronic absenteeism or behavioral infractions. There is no mention of athletics in the proposed changes.

The changes to 7212, as well as other policies, are open to public comment until May 13.

Justice Calls On Lawmakers To Rescind School Sports Transfer ‘Mistake’

Gov. Jim Justice called for state lawmakers to reverse a law that allows students to transfer high schools to play on another sports team without changing addresses or completing a waiting period.

In 2023, state lawmakers passed a bill that, in part, allowed for high school students to immediately transfer high school sports teams, regardless of whether they changed addresses.

In his Wednesday briefing, Gov. Jim Justice called on state lawmakers to that law, calling the bill’s initial passage a “real, real mistake.”

Previously, state policies for high school sports required students to physically move to join a new school’s sports team, or wait a year after transferring to become eligible to compete.

Passage of the bill was contentious. It followed failed attempts from Sen Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, to push such a bill into law both in 2022 and earlier in 2023.

The bill was ultimately passed when it was coupled with sports transfer policies for recipients of the state’s Hope Scholarship.

But critics of the law, including Justice, have said it created an imbalance in high school sports, as students from schools with fewer resources are transferring to larger, more competitive schools in record numbers.

In November, Mountain State Spotlight found that the number of football games won by at least 70 points hit a record-high 13 in fall 2023 — compared to zero in 2022, and just four in 2021.

They also found that 432 students transferred high schools for sports in the fall, which tripled the number of transfers from the previous year-and-a-half.

In 2023, Justice allowed the bill to become law without signing it himself, voicing support for its Hope Scholarship transfer policy but concern over the broader sports transfer rule.

Now, however, Justice has become more vocal in his calls for lawmakers to change course.

During a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, Justice asked legislators to pass a bill reversing the controversial policy before the end of this year’s legislative session.

“If you play on a team and your team loses that game 95 to three in football, how do you feel tomorrow to get up and to go to school? Really and truly, that’s what we’re talking about,” Justice said. “We’re talking about embarrassing kids.”

Justice said if it remains in effect, the law could discourage youth from underprivileged backgrounds to pursue sports.

“We’re talking about kids that then decide, ‘I’m not going to have anything to do with this, even though I’m a pretty good athlete, and I’m a pretty good football player or basketball player,” he said.

The deadline is Feb. 28 for the West Virginia Senate or the House of Delegates to pass any bills that might make the change the governor is asking for. After that the chambers will turn to reviewing bills passed by the other chamber.

Cabell School Board Approves Personnel Layoffs, Transfers

The Cabell County Board of Education has voted unanimously to approve 61 layoffs and 97 transfers for professional and service personnel.

The Herald-Dispatch reports during a meeting Tuesday, board members approved 48 reductions in force, or RIFs, and 83 transfers of professional personnel. The board also approved 13 RIFs and 14 transfers of service personnel.

The RIFs and transfers stem from an expected loss of $2.6 million in state funding for the county for the 2016 fiscal year, which begins July 1. 

Officials say they hope some of those positions can be recalled once the district’s financial situation is clearer.

Board president Suzanne Oxley says while staff realignment isn’t something they’d like to do, the board must comply with statutory mandates and factor in budgetary issues as well.

West Virginia Panel OKs $550 Million Coal-Fired Power Plant Deal

State utility regulators have approved the $550 million transfer of an American Electric Power coal-fired power plant by a subsidiary.

The Public Service Commission approved a deal Tuesday that will give Wheeling Power Company a 50-percent interest in the Mitchell Power Plant. The AEP facility is located on the Ohio River.

The Connor Run Fly Ash Impoundment and Dam are not included in the transfer. They will remain under AEP’s control and ownership.

The release says the deal provides protection for Wheeling Power customers against liabilities from the fly ash impoundment.

The release says there won’t be an immediate impact on rates because of the deal.

AEP has more than 478,000 customers in West Virginia.

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