The Illinois High School Association's Legislative Commission voted Monday (Nov. 25) to refer 11 proposals to amend the IHSA Constitution and By-laws to a vote of the general membership. The Commission voted after hearing feedback from member school personnel at 28 town meetings held around the state during the month of November.
The ballot containing the proposals will be available to each member school's official representative in the IHSA's online Schools Center, beginning Monday, December 2. The deadline to submit the ballot is midnight, Monday, December 16. The ballots will be tabulated and the results posted on Tuesday, December 17. Schools will be able to vote "no opinion" on any of the proposals. A simple majority of yes or no votes cast will determine whether each proposal passes.
Here is a summary of the proposals on the ballot:
- Proposal 1: Expands the opportunity for approved schools to participate in invitational tournaments during the regular season.
- Proposal 2: Expands the administrators permitted to serve on the IHSA Board of Directors to include the administrators designated as the Official Representative of their schools.
- Proposal 10: Reduces the number of summer contact days from 25 to 20.
- Proposal 11: Eliminates a required annual determination of classification which therefore permits the two-year classification cycle.
- Proposal 13: Moves the start of the Fall Baseball season one week earlier for practices and contests.
- Proposal 14: Moves the start and ending dates for the IHSA spring baseball and softball seasons (practices and contests) a week later.
- Proposal 15: Removes the by-law directing the IHSA to implement a football scheduling system for regular-season varsity games, impacting the current ability for schools to schedule games AND qualify for the playoffs as it is currently administered.
- Proposal 17: Modifies the contest limitations for boys and girls lacrosse to 20 matches in the regular season as opposed to a match and tournament limitation.
- Proposal 18: Modifies the team dates limitation in wrestling to a fixed number of dates (25) rather than a combination of dates and tournaments. Modifies the individual match limitation in wrestling to a set number of matches (45) rather than a combination of dates and tournaments.
- Proposal 19: Moves the ending date for the girls swimming season limitation one week earlier.
- Proposal 25: Permits schools an opportunity to appeal a player ejection when the player was ejected as a result of the misapplication of a playing rule by an official.
The text of these proposals, as amended, is available in a PDF document.
The remaining proposals were rejected by the Legislative Commission. A total of 35 of the 35 commissioners attended the meeting, which was held at the IHSA Office in Bloomington.