Agreed, USATF seems like the only organization that could bring sanity to this situation. They could do a couple of things:
Lower the qualification marks a little bit and expand the number of entries to the U20 championships, make it a big meet, host it somewhere people want to travel to and vacation (not Eugene). Market the heck out of it, live stream it etc. USATF has a great hand to play here as there is usually some kind of international qualifying spots on the line like Junior Worlds or Junior Pan-Am games etc. It's almost embarrassing how few people know about the U20 championships.
Or USATF could offer a proper high school championships. They might have to lower themselves to offering more typical high school events like the 1600 and 3200 or the mile and 2 mile, and/or measuring field events in feet etc. They also need to have a mechanism in place for accepting marks from non-USATF sanctioned meets, like high school state championships. Arcadia, NON, NBON etc all allow for this, USATF needs to suck it up and figure it out.
Either way the powers that be at USATF are missing a great opportunity to market the sport to a bunch of young track fans, it's like they are almost proud of the fact that they barely acknowledge that the high school season even exists. If they were smart they would plop down a national HS championships on the calendar 2 weeks after the last state high school championships and host it right next door to Disney Land/World or someplace like that.