Board of Directors Meeting Minutes

Summer IESA Board of Directors Meeting Synopsis

IESA Extends Rawlings Contract; Approves Changes to State Track Qualifying; Acts on Several Advisory Committee Recommendations

The summer meeting of the IESA Board of Directors was quite busy as the Board acted on several advisory committee recommendations, approved an extension through the 2018-19 school year of the ball contract with Rawlings, and approved a policy for the participation of transgender students.

The current contract with Rawlings concludes with the 2013-14 school year. The action by the Board extends the contract for an additional five years, through the 2018-19 school year. "I am extremely appreciative of the commitment Rawlings has made to the IESA, our schools, and students," said IESA Executive Director Steve Endsley. "Rawlings was the only company that submitted a bid when we opened up the bid process five years ago and we are grateful for their support of the IESA." The only change IESA schools need to make note with the new contract is that the optic yellow softball which previously had the brand Rawlings on it will now have the name Worth on it. It is the same exact softball--it will simply now have the Worth logo. The new softball model is WIESA but again, this will not be in effect until the 2014-15 school year.

A major change was made to the way students qualify for the state track meet. Effective with the upcoming 2014 track season, students will qualify for the state meet only if they finish in 1st place at the sectional meet or if they meet the qualifying standard for the event. Previously, students could qualify for the state meet by placing 1st or 2nd at the sectional meet or if they met the qualifying standard. "This change was necessary due to the unprecedented growth of the number of schools that enter the IESA state track and field series," said Endsley. "We simply cannot handle additional participants at our state meet site and be able to continue to conduct a quality state meet, hold it in a safe manner, and make the total experience enjoyable for the participants, spectators, event personnel, and parents. We continue to have more and more schools enter the state series each year and because of that, the new schools have to be assigned to a sectional, which means we have had to add sectional sites, which ultimately means more participants at the state meet. We will look at the qualifying standards this summer and will in all likelihood lower the standards so there are more participants than just the first place finishers but not make the standards so low that we end up with the same number of competitors before the change."

The Board approved a policy for the participation of a transgender student. The Association has been notified that a member school will have a transgender student. While a transgender policy had been discussed with the Board of Directors in prior meetings, the notification that a school will have a transgender student made the formation of the policy even more important and timely. The policy will be included in the IESA handbook and basically mirrors the transgender policy in effect with the Illinois High School Association.

Advisory, Board Committee Action

The Board acted on recommendations from the advisory committees in the following activities/groups: Scholastic Bowl, Music, Track and Field, Wrestling, Volleyball, Chess, Bowling, and Officials; on recommendations from the Board of Directors Staff Relations Committee; and on staff recommendations.

Advisory committees are generally composed of coaches, administrators, and officials with expertise in the respective sport or activity. Each sport/activity has an advisory committee and generally meets once a school year. The advisory committee reviews the Terms and Conditions, administrative procedures and all other aspects of the sport/activity and makes recommendation to the Board of Directors. The Board committees are composed of IESA Board members and meet once a year.

Scholastic Bowl

Four recommendations were presented to the Board and all four were accepted. A five team regional will now be organized as round-robin competition in two pools (one pool with two teams and one pool with three teams for a total of four rounds) instead of true round-robin competition where each of the teams play four matches resulting in five rounds of competition. The second recommendation approved requires schools to report only their IESA scholastic bowl matches as their season record when reporting their record online and schools will be seeded using onlythe IESA scholastic bowl record. A change was made to the moderator's re-reading of a toss-up question after being pre-empted. Finally, language will be added to that articulates there are no maximum number of contest limitations.

Music

The Board approved the committee's recommendation to add a scale element to the solo and ensemble adjudication forms.

Track and Field

In addition to the above mentioned change as to how participants qualify for the state meet, the Board also approved a change to the starting height at the state meet for the 7AA boys pole vault. A change to the terms and conditions will now allow the hurdles and 100 meter dash to be run against time (no prelims or semi-finals) IF weather should force the entire track events to be held on one day.

Wrestling

The Board did not approve a recommendation that would allow only one wrestler from each weight class to score at the regional level. They also did not approve that the top 8 wrestlers in each weight division would receive medals at the state meet.

Volleyball

The Board approved language to the Terms and Conditions that details proper protocol when teams enter the floor prior to their contest. .

Chess

Several changes were made to the format of the chess competition. The new format approved will have students entered into either the 7th grade division or the 8th grade division. There will no longer be playing boards. Schools can still enter a maximum of 7 students in each of the 7th and 8th grade divisions. Minor changes were approved to the Terms and Conditions because of the format change.

Bowling

The Board approved a slight change to the Friday time schedule allowing for warm-ups to start 10 minutes earlier than previous years. Also approved were changes to the finals advancement criteria and procedures to handle withdrawals, forfeits, and tiebreakers.

Officials

A slight adjustment to the amounts paid to officials assigned to the state series was approved. The new amounts will be included in the all-school mailing sent to schools on August 1.

Staff Relations Committee

The Board approved the re-employment of Assistant Executive Director, John Venerable. The Board also approved salaries for the remainder of the IESA staff.

Other Business

State Final Sites – The Board finalized all of the remaining state final sites for the 2013-14 school term. The lineup of state final sites is posted on the IESA Web Site www.iesa.org. Click on State Hosts and Dates under Activities.

Assistant Executive Director Report - Mrs. Cochran informed the Board of the schools who won the Commerce Bank Division Sportsmanship Award. The listing of schools winning the award in 2012-13 can be found on the IESA Web Site at www.iesa.org by clicking on the Division Awards icon in the Sportsmanship Section Section of the home page. Information was given to the Board on the final merchandise totals for the 2012-13 school year. The CubbyHole, Carlinville, IL, is the official merchandise vendor for IESA sectional and state final athletic apparel.

Associate Executive Director Report - The Board received a report about the speech coach and A.D. workshop will be held September 20 in Bloomington. Registration for both of these workshops is available on the IESA homepage.

Executive Director Report - The Board was provided with an update on the NFHS Summer Meeting, which will be held in Denver, CO from June 23-28. Mr. Endsley informed the Board he recently met with the Peoria Area CVB to discuss hotel accommodations for the state track meets.

State Series Finances – The Board received financial reports for Scholastic Bowl, Music, Wrestling, Girls Volleyball, Chess, and Bowling.

Treasurer's Report – The Board received and accepted the treasurer's report.

Division Reports

At each meeting of the Board of Directors time is devoted for each board member to report on communication with and requests from the member schools in the member's division. No member had a report.