RON SEIBEL: With GHSA, nothing is ever certain

They say the Georgia Legislature is the state’s greatest deliberative body.

No argument here. Watching House Speaker David Ralston at work is a quick study in Southern charm and politics, from the way he presides over votes to the way he brings together — or shoots down — legislation. He and others who hold positions of power under the Gold Dome make for some quality television viewing and news reading while the Legislature is in session.

Georgia’s second-greatest deliberative body, the argument can be made, is the GHSA Executive Committee.

The legislative group that determines policies and bylaws for the state’s primary high school athletics association doesn’t meet in opulence. The 66-member committee meets once or twice a year in a hotel ballroom in Macon, then at other times in a community recreation center that sits near the GHSA’s aging headquarters.

Yet whenever the GHSA’s Executive Committee meets, something is bound to happen that will turn at least part of the state sideways.

Let’s face it: When you have 66 people together in the same room, there are certain people who have the type of personality that will stand out. A lot of times, it’s the loudest voice that gets heard.

When a situation pops up that hasn’t been covered in previous meetings, things get interesting. That’s what happened with Dougherty County’s bid this summer to give Albany High student-athletes the right to open enroll while maintaining athletics eligibility.

The Albany High situation broke new ground, not for the fact that a school was closing, but for the fact that a school was closing on short notice without the luxury of a farewell school year. Students and teachers had to quickly get used to a new normal, something doubly difficult for the Albany High seniors who had to become students at a new school while having their final year at a place they called home taken away.

The fairest thing would have been to keep Albany High open for one more year. Short of that, however, the Dougherty County School System’s open-enrollment plan for rising Albany High seniors was a fair trade.

All was good … except that the GHSA doesn’t have a bylaw in place to cover school closings.

Huh?

Sure, the GHSA bylaws — known by school administrators as the White Book — contain eligibility rulings for a whole slew of possibilities, including school openings. But, for whatever reason, school closings aren’t covered.

Correcting that oversight is as simple as floating new legislation the next time the Executive Committee meets. It happens all the time. But with school starting Tuesday, the GHSA’s Eligibility Committee had to stick to what was on the books when it met last week, and that meant a special open-enrollment period in this case didn’t pass muster in terms of athletics eligibility.

Regardless of whether Dougherty County administrators were morally correct to pursue the special open-enrollment period — which they were — this was a situation that needed to be resolved much earlier than the days leading into the start of school. The whole thing became a fire drill of sorts, and the uncertainty did nothing but hurt the 13 student-athletes affected by the decision.

Hopefully what will come out of this will be a solid piece of legislation that covers this sort of situation in the future, clarifying the permissiveness of a special open-enrollment period already allowed when new schools open.

Sometimes deliberative bodies leave gaps in their work. And the Dougherty County School System walked into one of those gaps.

Cases like this will happen again. You just hope that those involved fix the oversight and move on.

Contact Ron Seibel at (229) 888-9306 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @RonSeibel.