State oversight of Missouri State High School Activities Association a priority for lawmakers

“I don’t see the role of this new oversight board as one to absorb the day-to-day governance of MSHSAA,” Bean told the Senate committee. “Rather, parents, students, coaches, school districts, etc., need an avenue to appeal decisions made by MSHSAA to an independent oversight board.”

Their bills set the framework for a board appointed by the governor that could handle appeals. Currently, MSHSAA has a two-pronged appeals process that allows athletes and their parents to challenge rules and decisions.

But a process in which MSHSAA oversees appeals of its decisions doesn’t satisfy everyone.

Nick Purler, who runs a wrestling academy in Moscow Mills, said he’s watched his wrestlers face MSHSAA decisions “who should have been treated more fairly.”

“MSHSAA seems to be the judge, jury and executioner, and I don’t think that’s fair,” he said.

MSHSAA operates as a member organization and is not run by the state, though most of the state’s public schools and many private schools have signed on as members.

Democrats questioned the idea of regulating a private, nonprofit organization.

“If we start here on nonprofits and say that there could be an appointed board by the governor, where are we to stop?” said state Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat. “Think about the amount of nonprofits that exist across the state. Now it is the state’s job to get involved in all of these other nonprofits?”

Senate Education Committee Chairman Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, argued that MSHSAA has a monopoly over high school athletics in the state. Although it’s a voluntary organization, there is not another option for public schools who want to participate in interscholastic competition.

MSHSAA Executive Director Jennifer Rukstad told the committee that the association operates as a democracy, with member schools voting on its bylaws.

“The schools have said, ‘We’ve set up our rules and now we need somebody to help us to follow them,’” she said. “So they have hired a staff, and they have tasked us to be the experts on the rules they have written, and they have asked us to help them enforce those rules.”

Investigation

MSHSAA’s board of directors, which has eight members and two at-large members, is elected by schools. A policy created in 2004 establishing the two at-large positions has caught the attention of lawmakers, driving attention to the legislation.

The policy requires the at-large positions to be filled by “candidates representing the under-represented gender of the current board or an under-represented ethnicity.”

Merlyn Johnson, superintendent of the Cassville School District, reported this policy to the Missouri State Auditor’s Office last year after he was deemed ineligible to run for an at-large position.

Rukstad, in an email to Johnson in March, said the board “has a majority of males,” which disqualified him unless he identified with an underrepresented “ethnicity or race group.”

In November, Hanaway announced she was investigating the incident, calling the policy an “overtly racist practice.” Rukstad was not embarrassed when her email to Johnson became public, she told committee members, because she believes the policy is not discriminatory.

The eight original seats on the board are open to any administrator, she said. It is just the two at-large positions with “additional qualifiers.”

State Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance, said the email fueled his support for the legislation.

“Seeing this email really has me ticked off,” he said. “Just adding up all the different flaws within MSHSAA, I think that is the reason why this is a sound bill.”

Neither committee took immediate action on the bills Thursday.