High school transfer rules ...

Indiana rules are pretty complex:

You can go anywhere you want -- no matter where you live -- if you enroll there for your ninth-grade year. Once you're there, that's your school.

Both schools -- the sending and receiving school -- have to sign off on the transfer. If so, the player has full eligibility right away.

If one school doesn't sign off, the IHSAA will often rule limited eligibility (365 days since last contest) -- can play JV but no varsity. Often, limited eligibility is given if the transfer is apparently for athletic reasons (especially to play for a "better team") and/or happens without changing residence.

However, there's another hoop because a few legislators got mad that kids from their districts got ruled ineligible and created a "review board" operated by the state Department of Education to review the IHSAA's eligibility rulings (IMO, it was created to rubber-stamp public-to-private transfers. The new anti-public school education secretary has basically said the review panel and the IHSAA should rubber-stamp all transfers). So, even if the IHSAA deems you ineligible, the review board can hear your case and you can be given full eligibility by them.

In our state, the private schools tend to be the superpowers, but charter schools are fairly young. The last two Class A basketball titles have been won by charter schools. Two years ago, the team that won just happened to have an All-Star team from Gary led by an AAU coach.

 

In Oregon, as long as you change residence, you can transfer no problem.

You can also request a transfer, but it's up to the principals at each school to approve it...usually they just care about #s balancing out, so if Podunk wants to send one to East High, then East High would need to send one to Podunk.

Just had a big case of this in our state with a potential D-I running back recruit, moving from the 5A state champs to a 6A (state's highest class) power this year.

 

Yes, we've definitely seen this same thing, and the schools with magnet programs have used it to recruit athletes from outside of their boundaries. One thing nobody ever seems to examine is whether these athletes are actually enrolled in these magnet classes once they get there. Because if they're not, they shouldn't be there. We never could get an answer as to whether anyone was monitoring this.

The whole issue is bizarre to me, because I grew up in an area with few private schools and no magnet programs. I've been out of high school 20 years, but if I picked up my senior yearbook right now and went through the 200-plus kids I graduated with, for most of them I could tell you who lived in which neighborhood. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore in a lot of places.

 

Our state has become a big ed-reform state, and of course, the first step is to blur school boundaries (and try to attack sports/academics/extracurriculars at public schools so people will sever their emotional connections, all while bolstering those at private/parochial/charter schools and celebrating their successes).

Last week, I'm interviewing a coach about a traditional neighboring rival for my pregame show: "our school districts border each other ... of course, now that's not as big of a deal since you can go wherever you want."