GHSA reclass committee to gather Thursday for discussion

Seven classifications and a four-year reclassification period appear to be on the way out in the GHSA.
            The reclassification committee is meeting Thursday morning at the GHSA office in Thomaston to discuss a number of possible changes in the process.
            The board of trustees has discussed the possibilities. The meeting is open to the public.
            The agenda can be found here.
            The two biggest items are likely to be voted on and passed at the next full meeting. One is returning to six classifications after a four-year experiment with a Class 7A. The other is going back to the two-year classification system.
            Both major changes were implemented at the same time in 2015. The grand plan for the top class was called “Big 44,” and ostensibly was to only have the top 44 schools as a power class, but it never really materialized that way.
            The plan to reclass every four years will apparently last only once.
            And big schools in South Georgia were still penalized by not having many opponents remotely nearby in the “Big 44.”
            Class 6A would be comprised of the top 12 percent in enrollment, with schools allowed to play up in the classification. Class A will be made up of the smallest 28 percent.
            After that, schools would be divided by four for 5A, 4A, 3A, and 2A, with 15 percent in each class.
            To be determined is an out-of-zone multiplier for student attending a school from outside that school’s district zone.
            Amid those major changes in 2015: the 3 percent rule. If more than three percent of a school’s enrollment came from outside its zone, that school was moved up a classification.
            Public schools will have designated attendance zones for districts, and the zone for non-public schools will be the public-school zone in which it is located.
            FPD and Tattnall are in the Howard zone, and Stratford is in the Westside zone. Mount de Sales is Central’s zone.
            Schools can play up a classification. If, say, five schools move up a class, the five smallest schools in that class can move down a class, except from Class 6A and into Class A.
            Proposals put some decision-making with the executive director with the approval of the reclassification committee, such as determining the isolation of schools (100 miles from another region school).