Now that another high school sports season has begun and the controversial alignment is in place for the next four years, it's safe to grade the Utah High School Activities Association's board of trustees for the job they did.
How about an F-minus?
They get that grade not only for the final result of the alignment plan, but also for the enormous waste of time the proceedings proved to be. They started in November of 2007, featured a first draft, a "rough" second draft, a "final" second draft, a "final" realignment plan and a final plan with an "adjustment." Those discussions lasted a full calendar year.
I saw firsthand how the process worked, covering three of the meetings. I hoped the board would look at ways to competitively balance the regions and classifications. Think outside the box. Don't worry about enrollment numbers, because in many ways they are misleading.
In the end, the enrollment numbers the Utah State Office of Education had for schools in October of 2007 were all that mattered.
Truly, that is fine. But don't mislead the public and school administrators and say their appeals will be taken seriously during the realignment process when they weren't. I watched Ogden, Uintah, Hillcrest and Granger, just to name a few, make compelling arguments why they shouldn't be placed in the classification the board had them in. All wasted their time, money and effort in making their presentations.
Interestingly, the only school to have its appeal result in a change of classification was Wasatch Academy, which was briefly placed in 2A before being dropped back to 1A. The difference in Wasatch Academy getting what it wanted was that it was able to garner votes and support from board representatives from large schools. Larger schools such as Granger, Cyprus and West basically had their appeals shot down because they didn't have the votes needed from representatives from places such as Delta and Salina.
Something wrong with that picture? I would say so. A big criticism of the UHSAA's board of trustees and executive committee for years has been that the small schools have way too much power for the number of students they are representing in their duties. When the larger schools make informative, compelling and well-done presentations about where they're placed in the alignment and they don't get their way because the 1A and 2A representatives are against them, then something is seriously wrong here.
But what's done is done, and it is extremely disappointing. My only suggestion for the next time they realign is for the board to set their cutoff numbers right away and make their final decisions. That will save everyone some time, effort and money in the process.
e-mail: aaragon@desnews.com