KSHSAA member schools approve ‘multiplier’ for private schools, but it is still not in effect yet
Valerie Norwood vs. Bishop Miege in the March state tournament.
by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — In March, the No. 1 ranked Wellington girls basketball team went into the Class 4A state basketball tournament semifinals with a 23-0 record. Sounds like a recipe for a possible state championship, correct?
Well, no. The Crusaders came up against Bishop Miege and got destroyed 82-42. Bishop Miege is a private school in the Kansas City area.
Schools such as Bishop Miege, Bishop Carroll, Topeka Hayden, Wichita Collegiate and Pittsburg Colgan have had tremendous success in sporting events, winning state championships in various sports – Class 4A especially.
This has been a source of contention for decades; critics feel private schools have an unfair advantage over public schools. The contention being private schools have unlimited recruiting advantages that public schools don’t have.
The Kansas State High School Activities Association announced this week that a proposal that would introduce a ‘multiplier’ for private schools inflating their enrollment for classification purposes has now passed the member schools.
But it isn’t a certainty yet. It must now be approved by both the Kansas State Board of Education and the state legislature prior to implementation. So this new multiplier proposal is far from a certainty and won’t occur next year.
Here is how it works:
Classifications are divided into nine groups based on enrollment from Class 6A to six-man football. Wellington is traditionally Class 4A with a classification count of 359 for schools 663 to 330. Bishop Miege has a count of 505 which puts it in the same classification as Wellington.
With the new multiplier rule when classifications are determined, all private school students will be multipled based on the number of championships won, geographic population and socio-economic population. For example, Miege could have a multiplier, say, 1.5, which would give them 757.5 students bumping them to Class 5A. Collegiate’s multiplier could be different.
That’s good news for 4A schools such as Wellington where state championships in football and basketball could once again be attainable. But that also means schools like Wichita Collegiate, which has hovered between 4A and 3A, will permanently be in 4A as far as post-season is concerned.
The KSHSAA, after it was approved by a committee, sent out ballots to all the member schools in May and each school had a month to respond via e-mail.
Voting Results were as follows:
Class 6A
Yes = 6 (16.7%) No = 30
Class 5A
Yes = 17 (47.2%) No = 19
Class 4A
Yes = 30 (83.3%) No = 6
Class 3A
Yes = 46 (71.9%) No = 18
Class 2A
Yes = 43 (67.2%) No = 21
Class 1A
Yes = 74 (63.2%) No = 43
Total number of member school votes: Yes = 216 (61.2%) No = 139.
The vote obviously was very unpopular with the biggest schools in Class 6A, which have been free of the private school burden, and not so popular with Class 5A schools as well which would have to deal with Miege again. The proposal got its biggest support among Class 4A schools where 83.3 percent voted to get Miege (and other Kansas City private schools) out.
Again, these changes probably won’t occur until at least the 2023-24 school year.
