@Ellejustus,
The DA posts its waiver rules. The waiver for private schools kids is supposed to be for those private school kids on a scholarship/reduced tuition where playing on the team is part of their discount/scholarship for the private school.
More likely than not, this rule is being abused by the private school parents/private school. The normal method is:
Private School: Jenny's tuition is $12,000 per year, here is your invoice.
Parent: Jenny is on a DA team and still wants to play on the school team, can we reflect a tuition discount of $5,000 on this invoice as an athletic scholarship?
Private School: Maybe, if you donated $5,000 to the building fund.
Parent: Deal.
Now the parent has a invoice reflecting a athletic scholarship and can ask the DA for a waiver.
With regard to your impression of US Soccer and the DA program, let me give you a quick history lesson:
11 years ago, US Soccer looked at the Boys development and said, damn, we have kids all over the board with different quality, we need to take control of this thing, so the Boy's DA league was started. The Boy's DA League was aimed at unifying all the elite boys in a league that could easily be monitored by US Soccer for purposes of tracking the development of these boys.
8-9 years later, after a lawsuit or two by the women claiming discrimination in their treatment (fields, pay, training facilities, etc.), the women pointed to the fact that there was no Girl's DA league as further evidence of a double standard. At the time, US Soccer's response was "Girls don't need a national league because the ECNL (US Club) and ODP and National League (US Youth) is doing a fine job." The Women said "b.s. we want a league of our own or we sue."
10 years after the boys DA was started US Soccer caved to the demand (not wanting to get sued) and started the girls DA. Truth be told, the "powers that be" at US Soccer think its stupid because (1) the ODP and ECNL was doing a great job of identifying top talent and (2) College programs soccer were doing a great job of continuing the development of players after youth development.
Make no mistake, US Soccer (aka the Federation) would prefer to not have the headache because they were doing really great without it and only started the Girls DA because the women in soccer was using the lack of a DA as evidence of discrimination.
US Soccer is in a catch-22 at this time. On the men's side, the MLS is a closed-single entity system that is almost ready to move to the next level but has to deal with a players association run by idiots. The Players Association are idiots because they have threatened legal action if the MLS (with US Soccer's blessing) adopts training and solidarity payments in line with the rest of the world (rather than working with the MLS and US Soccer on a solution). But, we can't say the Player's Association position is entirely wrong at this time, because of the MLS's closed system the avoids a free market. The lack of solidarity and training fees means the DA system is a monumental money loser.
On the women's side, the NWSL is and will be a money loser for may years to come. Success on the National Team level simply doesn't translate to success at the local level. US Soccer is trying to figure out how to keep the NWSL floating while dealing with a USWNT that is solely looking out for themselves and not women's soccer as a whole.
Is US Soccer corrupt? No, it finally has decent leadership now that Sunni is out of the picture. The fact we now have a GM picking the coaches, rather than Sunni, is great. But our problems run deeper than most understand because I doubt all but a very small few have even read Article 19 and how it screws our youth players over.