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The latest three-class high school basketball proposal hit its stated threshold of statewide support from school districts on October 26, and is expected to be voted on within days.
A focus group represented by Valley City Superintendent Josh Johnson has managed to garner over 75 letters of support for the plan, which would create a middle class (Class A) between the current Class A (AA under the new alignment) and Class B.
The North Dakota High School Activities Association (NDHSAA) Board of Directors will hear the finalized version of the proposal on or before November 14, and any new plan, should it gain authorization, would be implemented for the 2023-24 season.
The board stipulated that Johnson’s group get a support threshold of 60 percent of school districts before the NDHSAA hears specifics and makes their final vote on the proposal.
Enrollment cutoffs for each class, as presented in the plan, are as follows:
• Class AA: 576 students and above, as calculated by the average of grades 9-12 in the fall of 2021 and fall of 2022
• Class A: 180-575 students
• Class B: 179 students and below
In the proposed Class A East Region, Carrington would be the smallest school at 181 students. Other members of the region, in alphabetical order, would be Central Cass, Devils Lake, Dunseith, Four Winds-Minnewaukan, Grafton, Hillsboro/Central Valley, Kindred, Lisbon, Northern Cass, Oak Grove, Thompson, Turtle Mountain, Valley City and Wahpeton.
West Region membership in Class A would consist of Beulah, Bottineau, Des Lacs-Burlington, Dickinson Trinity, Hazen, Heart River (Belfield/South Heart), Killdeer, Nedrose, New Town, Rugby, Shiloh Christian, South Prairie, Stanley and Watford City.
Postseason play would feature seeding from 1 to 16 for the sub-region play-in games, and each region would follow their own format for time, date and location for the play-in game to advance to the eight-team regional tournament.
From there, the top four finishers in each region would advance to the state tournament, similar to the qualification process for both the WDA and EDC tournaments.
Stated tournament sites for Class A would rotate between Grand Forks, the Jamestown Civic Center and Minot for girls, and Bismarck, Minot and Fargo for boys.
At the Carrington School Board’s regular meeting on Tuesday, October 11, the board voted unanimously against the three-class proposal, citing increased travel mileage and costs as a primary reason. Each school gets one vote towards the plan’s final yes-no numbers.
According to a post from the North Dakota Preps message board dated from October 26, a total of 10 would-be “new” Class A schools have gone on record in support of the three-class system, those being Devils Lake, Turtle Mountain, Valley City, Wahpeton, Watford City, Beulah, Central Cass, Kindred, Rugby and Stanley.
Of those schools, the first five listed are all current Class A members, but possess the lowest enrollment in the upper division and would stand to benefit the most from a new classification featuring more of their peers in class size.
A considerable portion of the rest of the proposed Class A voted no, including Carrington, and there were seven other schools in middle class consideration who had not voted on the issue as of the time of the post.
Another bloc of “no” votes includes the state’s eight parochial schools. In the past several years, one of the main drivers of three-class basketball speculation has been what to do with current Class B private schools, due to their perceived advantages in facilities and open enrollment, among other factors.
Parochial students, along with “out-of-zone” students who are not a resident of the district in which they attend, ex-open enrollment students and charter school students, are subject to a multiplier of 1.0 in enrollment numbers, which drives many of the private schools towards the middle class threshold in the plan.
For example, a student who chooses to attend a private school, or who open enrolls in another district, counts as two students for a school’s figures. The multiplier does not apply to co-op agreements between schools.