Here is some info from the upcoming FHSAA BOD's meeting regarding re-classification: https://fhsaa.com/documents/2021/2/10//February_2021_Complete_Agenda.pdf?id=1151
Item for Discussion:
The 2021-22 school year starts a new two year classification cycle per policy 12. The student enrollment numbers used for this upcoming cycle were submitted by member schools to the FHSAA Office in October 2020. FHSAA Staff has heard some concern from membership concerning the validity of the student enrollment numbers submitted due to COVID-19. Some of the ideas from membership was to extend the current classification setup by one or two years. FHSAA Staff has reviewed student enrollment numbers from the last 3 years (October 2020, October 2019 and October2018) and followed up with school districts and schools for student enrollments that may have the appearance of a significant percentage decrease or increase.
There is also a Discussion Item regarding 1A:
Request to discuss the revamping of IA rural and how the class is determined moving from a set number of student enrollment at 600 to a set number of schools in the class by sport.
Over the course of the years the IA rural class has been in existence It no longer resembles what it was intended to be and also has been consistently manipulated by schools and school based personnel. We have seen schools that have had their enrollment numbers decreased by many students and come in for classification purposes at 600, 599, etc. to get under the 600 mark that was set in the beginning of this class being formed. The sole purpose of using 600 as the number in the beginning was that it was determined that there needed to be 32 teams in the sport of football for example, in order to make the classification sustainable and at that time it took the number up to 600 to reach that 32 threshold. That is no longer the case but what schools are doing is manipulating their numbers through various ways. Below is a list of some of the ways these numbers are being manipulated. Sending lower achieving students to alternative schools and placing them with an administrator” so they are considered a different school and fall under the non4raditional student category so the main school only has to count the students that participate in sports at the main high school which is a number that is IMPOSSIBLE for the FHSAA to monitor or anyone to verity. Keep in mind many of these students cannot graduate because they are a complete virtual platform that does not offer enough classes for graduation or they will then come and graduate with their peers at their home school after all sports are completed Using virtual platforms within what is now their covid relief plan to house students that are doing virtual school within the home school, not FLVS, but are some on campus and some off. Many schools are allowing students that are staying home for ‘covid concerns” to participate still in athletics. These students are not being counted under the home school so they don’t count in their student enrollment numbers for classifications. These are just a couple of examples but I am certain if I dig there are many more. The ENTIRE PURPOSE of the IA Rural class was to create a class that is for like schools and like communities. You would be hard pressed to find many of the schools in 1A that have a chain grocery store, any fast food places, more than I or 2 red lights and almost none will have a Walmart. We are now getting to the point where there are schools with every fast food restaurant there Is, Walmart supercenters. a major state highway running through them, and almost 6,000 people in the city itself compared to the majority of schools that have closer to 2,000 people in their respective communities. I will provide the exact population for all rural school communities at the board meeting. My biggest point is that if we remove the 600 number and just take the smallest X number of schools per classification for each rural sport we would take away all manipulation tools that could be used to take athletic advantage of a school working to get below that number. This will not alleviate all problems but it wili go a long way to fixing this issue which I believe could mean the end of the classification in the future. I also pose this thought IA has always been criticized as being the only class that has a set number. This would take away that perceived inequity and place them on a similar, yet not exact, playing field as the other classes. In closing, I believe we must make a harsh move to eliminate the manipulation that is not taking place to get schools into the rural class and it is only going to get worse with covid and the future of education that is moving more and more towards virtual and non traditional student education. I have been the biggest proponent on this board for some time to leave the IA class alone but it is time to make some changes to save the integrity of the classification. Bobby Johns
If the goal is to even the playing the field, the FHSAA has already come up with the solution. I do not think the idea has gotten past the discussion phase in the advisory committees. It is to split up into "Urban" and Suburban by county and then have 3 classification in each. Urban would be Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Duval, Orange, Hillsborough and Pinellas. Suburban would the rest of the counties. Rural remains the same.
The logic behind that idea is that those 7 counties win the most state championships, so splitting into 2 divisions would accomplish the goal.
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