Transfers 101

September 21, 2011

A recent blog (“Troubling Transfers”) brought us several responses where the writer had student-specific issues, to which we do not respond here. Questions about a particular pupil should first be addressed to the local school’s administration.  If the school needs help with the answer or wishes to prepare a request for waiver, MHSAA staff is ready to help.

One writer sought a list of the 15 exceptions to the automatic ineligibility of a transferring student.  Here are brief summaries (not the full rule):

Eight Residency Exceptions

   1. Student moves with the people he/she was living with previously (full & complete).
   2. Student not living with parents moves back in with them.
   3. Ward of the Court, placed with foster parents.
   4. Foreign exchange student moves in with host family who resides in district.  Two semesters/three trimesters only.
   5. Married student moves into school district.
   8. Student moves with or to divorced parent.
 12. An 18-year-old moves without parents.
 13. A student resides in a boarding school.

Five School Status Exceptions

   6. School ceases to operate, not merged.
   7. School is reorganized or consolidated.
   9. School board orders safety transfer or enrollment shift.
 11. Student achieved highest grade available in former school.
 15. New school established; student enrolled on first day.

Two Student Status Exceptions –

 10. Incoming first-time 9th grader.
 14. Expelled student returns under preexisting criteria.

In three cases (exceptions 8, 12 and 13), an Educational Transfer Form must be completed by administrators of both schools and the MHSAA before the student may participate.

In four cases (exceptions 2, 8, 12 and 13), the exception may only be utilized once by a student while enrolled in grades 9 through 12.

There is also a provision where a student may request a waiver at the subvarsity level for a 9th- or 10th-grade student who has never played any MHSAA tournament sport in high school.

I recognize this is all “un-bloglike,” but the topic of transfers brought some basic and general questions that we could answer here.
 

Tools of Thought

July 13, 2018

(This blog first appeared on MHSAA.com on May 11, 2012.)


I am famous at home and office for my lack of keyboarding skills. The only “C” grade I received in high school was a summer school course in what was then called “typing.” At Dartmouth I paid a woman who worked at the dining hall to type my college papers. In an early job at the University of Wisconsin I typed the play-by-play of Badger football and basketball games with a clumsy “hunt-and-peck” approach.

Today, with the same lack of style, I pound out dozens of emails daily, hammering the keys like my first manual typewriter required four decades ago.

But for any document of great length or importance, I do as I’ve always done: take up pencil (my software) and legal pad (my hardware). There is no question that, for me, the nature of the equipment I’m using for writing affects the nature of the thinking.

With his eyesight failing late in his life, Freidrich Nietzsche bought his first typewriter, changing from pen and paper to the new technology of the 1800s. According to a 2008 article in Atlantic Monthly by Nichols Carr, a friend wrote to Nietzsche in a letter that, since adapting to the telegraphic style, Nietzsche’s terse prose had become even tighter. To which Nietzsche replied: “You are right, our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”

Which makes one wonder where all today’s tweeting and texting may take us.