Arbitration ruling intensifies public-private school debate

If there’s one big lesson learned from last week’s arbitration victory by four private schools over the CIF Southern Section, it’s that the section will no longer decide to move private schools from their sports areas for competitive equity reasons.

Twice the Southern Section has tried to move La Verne Damien and Glendora St. Lucy’s, believing its bylaws provided authority to do so. Twice the schools have won legal decisions to stay put.

“There’s a message, and we have to accept that message,” Southern Section Commissioner Rob Wigod said.

St. Bonaventure, Oaks Christian, Damien and St. Lucy’s get to stay in their current sports areas. All the schools in their areas have to meet again and come up with new leagues by April 7.

Wigod said the dispute cost the section $250,000 in legal fees and the price could have been $3 million if the matter had gone to trial instead of arbitration.

Attorney Robert Prata, who represented Damien and St. Lucy’s, said his work was pro-bono. But he did get hugs from his two sons who attend Damien and play sports.

Clearly, the battle between private and public schools is heading toward a tipping point. Sending St. Bonaventure and Oaks Christian back into an area loaded with public schools re-ignites the debate whether private and public schools should be separated in the playoffs.

The Southern Section rejected the idea of allowing the powerful St. Bonaventure and Oaks Christian football teams to play only in the Catholic school Mission League while the schools’ other teams remained in their current configurement. That would have been the simple solution.

Now in Ventura County, administrators must find some public school participants to join a football league with St. Bonaventure and Oaks Christian. There don’t appear to be a whole lot of volunteers other than Westlake, so things could get ugly.

Also, Oaks Christian wants to join the Marmonte League for all sports, and some public schools in the area want none of that.

Wigod said on Saturday he wasn’t ready yet to analyze the ramifications of the decision.

“We saw it more as a bylaw challenge,” he said. “We believed that we had followed the bylaws that the membership makes. Obviously, those bylaws were challenged and the decision of the arbitrator went against us.”

There won’t be changes to area placement again until 2018, so there’s time to review, reflect and regroup. But the issue of private versus public schools in sports competition isn’t going away. The debate is intensifying and the costs are rising.

Somehow, the two sides need to find common ground.

“The concept of separating people has never been something we should work toward,” Prata said.

“The kids want to play each other,” Oaks Christian Athletic Director Jan Hethcock said. “It’s the coaches and administrators that don’t want to play.”

As for animosity directed at private schools, Hethcock said, “I can’t make people like us if they have some preconceived idea we’re a big monster that we go out and recruit people. That’s absolutely incorrect. We’re nice to everybody who comes on our campus. That’s what education is about. We have no enemies.”

Perhaps this will be a second chance for St. Bonaventure and Oaks Christian to re-introduce themselves to schools in their neighborhood. For at least the next four years and probably longer, they all must get along.

Eric.sondheimer@latimes.com