Preach, Vito
Long before we bought a house or even had kids, the first thing UncleJimmy and AuntJanie did was research the SCHOOL district and moved to the best one we could afford to so that future LilJimmy's could get educated real good. Now, LilJimmy starts excelling in Robotics..we didn't immediately start looking for the best Robotics school in the area, we trusted the educators to teach him. Here's the rub tho..if we did pull him out of our current district and send him to Robotic Tech, we could have and no IHSAA Dept of Robotics would have said "you cannot do that as it is for Robotics reasons only"! So why do they do that for athletes? Or do they do that for education too? So that doesn't seem fair.
On the other hand, if we have rampant transfers, well then you have (using da Region as examples only as that's what we're talking) Portage being the "wrestling" school, Merrillville becoming the "football" school, LC for "baseball" etc and you take your elite kids to those schools. With no transfer rules/guidelines then you suddenly have schools that can actively recruit, offer "incentives" etc. Plus, maybe LilJohnny is the best rightfielder his Soph year and gets "accepted" to LC. Who's to say the LC coach doesn't find a better LilJoey next year and says "sorry, LilJohnny..you're cut!" Then Johnny goes to the second best school and that rightfielder gets cut and so on down the line.
There isn't an easy answer and no situation is cut and dried. Like VIto implies tho, there has to be some type of rule/guideline or else it's just open enrollment for anybody, anywhere, at anytime. Then your mediocre/fringe Robotic kids are the ones who lose as they get cut for better kids.
I hope for the best for the kids. They truly are the ones who suffer in this situation. It's a tought deal all around.