Lame duck FHSAA board meets landmark changes pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis

Clearwater Central Catholic athletic director John Gerdes, for the final time in his one year-term as president, will call to order a historic meeting of the 16-member Florida High School Athletic Association board of directors on Tuesday.

The two-day gathering, beginning Monday with committee meetings at the association’s headquarters building in Gainesville, marks a moment of monumental change for the FHSAA, which has governed sports for almost all Florida high school since 1920.

House Bill 225, promoted by the Republican majority and signed into law by Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis last month, goes into effect July 1 and tosses out current members of the board, including elected representatives like the Master’s Academy athletic director Trevor Berryhill, ahead of the 2023-24 school year and a September meeting. They will be replaced (if not chosen) mostly by appointees selected by DeSantis, who by all accounts pushed hard for the bill’s passage a year after similar proposals targeting the FHSAA failed.

The new law provides more freedom for virtual and charter school students to pick their high school teams, and changes policy to permit public address announcers to orchestrate prayers (or other brief messages) at state playoff and championship games.

The ban on prayers was one of several issues where the FHSAA found itself on the wrong side of DeSantis, who was a baseball standout for Dunedin High School and Yale University.

It was no coincidence that he ceremoniously signed HB225 into law on stage at Cambridge Christian, the Tampa school that filed a lawsuit against the association after it was not permitted to hold a prayer before a 2015 football state championship game in Orlando’s Camping World Stadium.

“You have a right to free expression of religion,” DeSantis said during the signing ceremony. “If government is denying your right to say a prayer before the game they are infringing your speech.”

U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell ruled that the FHSAA did not obstruct First Amendment rights. Cambridge is appealing that federal court decision, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of Washington state high school football coach Jeremy Kennedy, who was fired after praying on the field after games.

In the wake of that Kennedy v. Bremerton School District verdict the American Civil Liberties Union stated the decision was a “serious blow to the long-held principle that students have the religious liberty right to be free from school-sponsored prayer”.

DeSantis publicly criticized the FHSAA for delaying the starts of its sports seasons and canceling spring sports playoffs in 2020 during the COVID-19 outbreak.

“All these people that were on their medical advisory board, or something, almost every one of these physicians said that it would be catastrophic to allow kids to compete in sports because of COVID,” DeSantis said. “Now that was crazy to say even at the time, and I knew that that was false and we said, ‘You have a right to play.

“There needs to be some changes at this organization when you have that type of advice coming in.”

The association was caught in crossfire again this year after its sports medicine advisory committee recommended that its preparticipation physical forms signed by physicians be updated to require responses to questions about female athletes’ menstrual periods for safety and health reasons. Answers to those questions previously were optional.

The proposal drew immediate outcry from parents and others who said it invaded privacy. Some said it was tied to a law signed by DeSantis that bans transgender girls from participating in high school sports.

Among a scathing stack of complaints sent to the FHSAA was a letter from Tampa doctor Deborah White, who wrote that “the only reason is to weed out transgender kids who may not have periods. As a doctor I would never fill out this form.”

A letter signed by 30 of 35 Democratic members of the state House of Representatives urged the FHSAA to reverse course and remove the questions. The board voted 14-2 in February to do so.

Gerdes and FHSAA staffers have said the move to make menstrual questions mandatory was never tied to participation for transgender athletes. But Florida law now says students identified biologically as boys at birth can’t participate in girls sports.

The Kansas State High School Activities Association executive board in April approved a policy that will make students who were identified as boys on their birth certificate to be ineligible to play girls sports. The Associated Press reported at the time that at least 21 states had restrictions for transgender athletes.

Republican Rep. Fred Hawkins of St. Cloud, author of HB225, said his bill was drafted long before the physical exam paperwork changes became a hot topic. He told the Sentinel in February his call to revamp the FHSAA was designed to provide accountability and assure there is oversight on decisions made by the association.

Still, virtually all of the stipulations in the new law are controversial.

An email poll of Orlando area athletic directors as the school year winds down drew 14 replies. Ten said they would have voted “No” to the legislation, four stated they were in favor of the change.

One of the criticisms is that revisions that add more freedom for athletes to choose or change schools worsens a trend that has seen top athletes transfer to power programs, creating competitive imbalance.

Relaxed Florida transfer rules lead to growing free agency in high school sports

Others said the board is now politicized because eight of 12 seats aside from one saved for the commissioner of education will be hand-picked by DeSantis (and future Governors). The previous format gave each member school a vote to decide 12 of the 15 available slots. Governing boards similar to the former FHSAA model are in place for most state associations across the country.

A recent Tampa Bay Times report found that Delaware, which replaced its governing body in 2002, is the only high school sports association fully under state government purview.

“For a state that seems to pride itself on being against big government, these changes speak clearly to the contrary,” Hagerty athletic director Jay Getty wrote in his reply to the poll. “This membership created the current system of democratic representation along with the rules and bylaws to ensure equitable environments for competition. Governance in the organization from the sport committees, the athletic director advisory committee, the representative assembly, and the elected board of directors works to balance changes for the benefit of all members.”

Getty is a former FHSAA board member who now sits on its A.D. advisory committee.

The rewrite also reduces the contribution of the FHSAA representative assembly, another elected body that met annually to consider and act on proposals to amend by-laws. That group can now only make recommendations to the board.

One area A.D. who asked to remain anonymous wrote that change is “like saying that we are going to lessen the legislative process of Congress to an advisory capacity, so the Executive Branch can make all of the decisions in the federal government. This lessens the democratic process that has been in place with the FHSAA and interscholastic athletics since its inception in our state.”

DeSantis may gain power to abolish FHSAA board of directors, name replacements

Gerdes too has concerns. But he expressed optimism and hope that power brokers in Tallahassee won’t clean house and will instead work alongside first-year FHSAA executive director Craig Damon and his 26-person staff.

“I’m going to take the legislators for their word. They’ve said this is about accountability for the FHSAA,” Gerdes said. “I do believe you can question whether or not that accountability needs to be governmental. But I see some potential for this to be a good thing. I think there’s an opportunity for them to learn a lot about Craig and his staff and how talented they really are. How much they really care about what’s best for our student-athletes.

“I do believe it’s going to be drastically important who is on that next board.”

Early versions of the bill called for nine board members with all but one appointed by DeSantis, and would have given power to the DOE to approve separate associations for leagues such as the Sunshine State Athletic Conference, which now operates within the FHSAA framework with teams that choose to go independent. Those stipulations were not included in the final bill but it does state that if the FHSAA fails to comply it can be replaced by another non-profit organization.

Here is a breakdown of key elements in the revised statutes:

•Charter schoolers, Florida Virtual School students, and those at non-member private schools can now join consenting private school teams in sports that are not offered by their school.

•Public school players can remain on a team after they transfer to another school during a school year.

•Schools can opt to participate in selected FHSAA sports playoffs. It is unclear whether this means schools that are currently not approved for state series play can participate. Does it mean a national team like IMG Academy football can jump into the playoffs?

•The Commissioner of Education can direct the FHSAA to revise its bylaws at any time.

•Changes to FHSAA bylaws must be ratified by the DOE.

•The next hiring of an executive director by the board must be ratified by the DOE.

•A stipulation that diversity be considered when appointing board members is deleted. The previous FHSAA policy allowed one minority appointment to improve diversity.

Since 1997 legislation required the FHSAA to eliminate its executive committee and broaden its governance structure, the board has had 16 members, 12 elected by schools in their geographic section. That saved a seat for the DOE and also included: one elected public school representative and one elected private school representative from each of the FHSAA’s four sections (Orlando area schools are Section 2); two school board members (one from Sections 1-2, one from 3-4) and two school superintendents with that same clause; and three at-large reps appointed by the DOE.

Here is the breakdown for the new 13-seat board:

•Two appointed public school representatives from different sections.

•Two appointed private school representatives from two different sections.

•Two appointed at-large representatives: one from Sections 1-2, one from Section 3-4.

•One appointed school superintendent from Section 1.

•One appointed school board member from Section 4.

•Commissioner of Education or delegate.

•Two elected public school representatives from different sections.

•Two elected private school representatives from different sections.

Varsity Content Editor Buddy Collings can be reached by email at bcollings@orlandosentinel.com