rick7425

Itzme, I stated some pretty simple facts in direct response to an inquiry about the status of the case, including a response to a suggestion that both parties had said it was "over." The positions of the parties on the remaining issues are a matter of public record, and the fact that BA is the plaintiff and is still pursuing the case is self-evident. If I were going to comment on the case, I would have some much different things to say.

BA still has an antitrust claim pending in the district court. BA claims to have an equal protection claim pending there as well, although there is a question about whether the previous decisions in the case put an end to the equal protection claim. And BA is trying to get the district court to let BA argue a new equal protection claim. TSSAA is a defendant. It can't be over for TSSAA unless either BA (the plaintiff) stops pursuing it or the court dismisses whatever claims are left. BA has lost its main claim, the First Amendment claim, but obviously BA is not willing to let the case end.

Could this be true in some cases? Of course it could. But to say that this is the case with "most private supporters" is over-generalized, judgmental, and unsupportable. I sent two of my three children to private school when they reached middle school age, after the oldest one had attended our zoned public schools. The reasons had nothing to do with "class," the "inner city," or "less fortunate families." For my middle child, it was about having a small school setting that would be better for his learning needs. I knew his learning style and learning needs from his elementary school experience, and I knew how different it would be if he attended the zoned middle school, because I already had that experience with my oldest child. I wasn't willing to take the chance that he would be allowed to get lost in the shuffle at the larger school he was zoned to attend. For my youngest child, it was simply about having my two youngest children (close in age) at the same school. Meanwhile, I have continued to support public education in ways that you would not imagine. So, as one of those "most private supporters" you mention, I suppose I find your presumptuous remarks offensive as well.

Division II was created to address a dilemma over need-based financial aid and the old "quota rule." Last fall the FRA girls won the A/AA state soccer championship. Your generalized and unsubstantiated accusations toward private schools unfairly diminish the efforts and accomplishments of that group of girls. So let's be a little more specific -- 1. Which of those FRA girls were recruited? 2. Who recruited them? 3. How did the recruitment occur? 4. When did the recruitment occur? 5. What "help" did they receive toward tuition? If you don't have answers for these questions, then perhaps you will agree that your broadside criticism of private schools is unfair, if not downright offensive.

OP, I have stayed out of this debate for awhile now because it became a bit monotonous, the posts redundant. But I still look in occasionally, and here I have to agree with Bighurt (with whom I do not always agree). Whatever credible points you may make are lost in your excessively broad and accusatory generalizations about private schools. You may have some particular example of something with some particular private school, but I'm not sure what basis you have for extrapolating into a generalized critique of all private schools. The debate becomes near impossible, because those who disagree with you find themselves trying to respond to baseless accusations instead of addressing real underlying issues. You make some broadside accusation with no facts to support it, then those who disagree with the conclusions you reach are left trying to disprove something that could not be proved in the first place. I suspect that's why brbb (with whom I also do not always agree) appears to find the exchanges with you so frustrating. You're judging a lot of books by their covers.

Bighurt: Only moving a few teams makes it a little more practical, but there is still a problem for those teams that get moved. They will lose traditional rivalries, and they will lose the regular season revenues that come with higher attendance at those traditional rivalry games. You also will have problems with maintaining rivalries from one sport to the next. Some of a school's basketball rivalries may not be as significant if the schools are no longer playing each other in football because of inconsistency in classification between sports based on the merit system. The basketball problem is also still a big problem for a school whose boys and girls teams are playing in two different classifications. That would add all sorts of scheduling problems for the school, and it would hurt attendance and the revenue that accompanies attendance. In a school setting where one of those programs drives the attendance at games, the other program could really suffer (and we don't even need to venture into the potential for Title IX implications with this). It still just seems like it opens a Pandora's Box of regular season problems. The merit system sounds appealing in the abstract, but I don't think it is such a great idea.

I think this merit system is sort of a pie-in-the-sky idea anyway. It sounds good in theory, but it seems pretty impractical. It would make it pretty hard for schools to make up their schedules since reclassification would be very much up in the air, however often it occurred. It seems like the formula for reclassification would have to take into account things like strength of schedule, since those in the lower merit classifications would be playing easier schedules and might therefore get bumped up when perhaps they don't deserve to be. I guess you would have to put together a sort of RPI system for high schools in each sport. And I suspect a lot of schools would see waning interest and perhaps waning revenues in the regular season if they can't maintain some of their long-standing traditional rivalries because they keep getting bumped around in classification based on merit. And this doesn't even reach the problem identified above with basketball, where the vast majority of the games are indeed doubleheaders. Different classifications for boys and girls teams in basketball would potentially add a lot of extra expense and could detract from the benefits to the students and supporters of the school when their boys and girls teams regularly have to play in different places. There are other sports like track where boys and girls teams sometimes join in single meets as well. I suspect that you'll find some complaints no matter what system is used to classify schools for competition. I don't know, but it seems to me like this "merit system" idea is a sort of vague idea that sounds good in the abstract but may not be so good when you have to work out the nuts and bolts of it. It seems to be a little too playoff-driven. I suspect it would just create a lot of new headaches and new problems for every school in the state, not to mention a lot of extra work for TSSAA, in order to appease the handful of schools that get upset when they can't win a state championship as often as they think they deserve.

If this were an exact science, there wouldn't be all this debate about divisions and multipliers and what's fair or not fair. TSSAA tried a multiplier. With a few years of experience with it, there still is no universal consensus on the wisdom or fairness of the multiplier. If the members of the TSSAA Board of Control (Ronnie Carter doesn't decide this) should conclude that some other solution to this ongoing debate should be examined or tried, what's wrong with that? Why criticize them for trying to find better solutions to this classification issue?

Behind on the "priority list," or could this just be a year when the public school teams happen to be performing better? Or could it be that the multiplier is too high and results in some unfairness to the DI privates in girls basketball?

Has anyone else noticed that all 24 teams in this week's DI girls basketball state tournament are public school teams? What, if anything, does this suggest about the multiplier?

The rule addressing which schools member schools can play used to be in Article III Section 1 of the TSSAA Bylaws. It was a lengthy rule; and as relevant to the current discussion, it allowed TSSAA member schools to play "category 1, 2 or 3" schools approved by the State Department of Education. This took in some schools like Middle Tennessee Christian School, a non-member school that played member schools (FRA for sure) in basketball. Two years ago, the rule was changed. It now appears in Article IV, Section 1 of the TSSAA Bylaws. It is a much shorter and simpler rule that, for purposes here, simply provides that a member school "is permitted to play or scrimmage any secondary school team with grades 9 and above in regular season play." The revised rule permits member schools to schedule regular season contests against home school teams.

The fact that the NFHS (not the NHFS) recognizes only one association per state is irrelevant when it comes to scheduling regular season contests. Your assertion that "By rule...publics could not play privates if they secede...at all" is wrong. Article IV, Section 1 of the TSSAA bylaws states, "A member of the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association is permitted to play or scrimmage any secondary school team with grades 9 and above in regular season play." TSSAA member schools already compete in the regular season against schools that are not TSSAA members, including even home school teams. [indian, I suppose this truly may be arguing for the sake of arguing, because I guess it doesn't really matter except as a pure hypothetical.] Baldcoach is not my "cohort." I don't know who he is or what school he is from or follows. It does appear that neither of us believes a complete split of public and private schools in TSSAA is a good idea. I suspect that beyond that shared belief, he and I may have very little in common. As for the rest, it seems pointless to keep this up. You may have the last word.

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing. I was hoping some of my comments and questions could prompt one to see things from a different perspective. I'll see if I can be more clear. I oppose a public/private split. I think it is a bad idea for a lot of reasons, both short term and long term. My preference would be to move in the other direction -- perhaps leave DII in place for aid-giving schools in football since that seems the hardest problem to solve, but use some sort of multiplier to put the aid-giving schools back in DI for the other sports. I am not "on" anyone for wanting to reduce DI to three public classes in football after a split. I said I agreed with that idea. I would agree with that reduction right now, even if there were no "split." The reason I would agree with it is because I think that when there are too many classes, the "state championships" become too watered down and less meaningful. You're right, for the non-aid schools in DII after a total split, 30 is the number of schools that would be available as a classification -- and that is part of why I think a total split would be unfair to those schools. 30 schools comprise less than 10% of the membership in TSSAA. To me, a "state championship" in a classification consisting of just 30 schools would be too watered down. I thought that if Antwan believed too many classes in DI meant watered-down championships because so few schools were competing for each one, then he might understand at least one reason why I would find a complete split so bothersome. That's why I asked why he thought fewer classifications in DI football was a good idea. I could go on and on about things like what I believe to be the over-emphasis on winning state championships, the adverse effect that the demise of neighborhood schools has had on high school sports, and so on. But now that I've experienced the "mumbo jumbo" remark, distortion of my words, and a suggestion that I'm arguing just to argue, I'm really not enjoying this anymore. I think I'll just stay out of this debate. You guys can go back to beating up on Baldcoach.

You can call what I say "mumbo jumbo" all you want, as you did the last time you responded to something I posted. But don't deliberately distort what I said. I didn't say anything about "'different' as you put it ... public school kids." I spoke of visiting gyms and competing with girls from different backgrounds in different communities. Why would you try to distort that? And no, I'm not saying that a magnet school has an advantage over what you label as an "elite" private school (whatever "elite" means). The point was that when Hume Fogg won the game against FRA, the FRA kids didn't sit around and try to find some mystical advantage they could use as an excuse to explain it away. Hume Fogg just played better. As for scheduling, I've heard plenty of DII folks who talk very differently than you do about the difficulties they encounter scheduling games. There is only one out of the 18 TSSAA sports in which the size of all the classes in DI is a little over 50 -- football. The classes are larger in all the other sports because there are only three classes for well over 300 schools, and in some of those sports the A and AA classes are combined for championship events (e.g., soccer, track, cross country). And it is still a bit curious to me that you don't see any inconsistency between your notion that 30 or so is enough for each class in every sport in DII, on the one hand, and your belief (with which I agree) on the other hand that DI football should be cut down to three classes like the other sports. Why do you think DI football should be cut down to three classes, by the way? Do I think the formation of a separate association by the private schools would be bad? Absolutely, for both public and private schools. But if the public school folks keep making things more and more difficult for the privates, it should come as no surprise if something like that occurs. I don't really know why you say "[p]ublics would not be allowed to play privates at all," since the TSSAA rules allow a member school to schedule games against any school team (whether a member or not). Hopefully the folks that make classification decisions will be wise, recognize that they need to consider the interests of and be fair to all the member schools they represent (including the privates), and come up with something better than a complete split, and then none of the "what ifs" will be an issue.

Indian, if this was addressed to me, I think you did miss my point. The point is that if a "complete split" occurred, there would still be roughly 300 publics in DI -- enough to draw up the classes whatever way works best logistically without watering down championships to the point that they are meaningless. In DII there would be roughly 65 schools, divided fairly evenly at this point between aid and non-aid schools (a difference that apparently was significant enough, regardless of enrollment, to warrant the creation of DII in the first place). If DII is divided into two classes, you've got roughly 30 schools in each class. The "championships" of the non-aid privates would be earned against such limited competition that they truly would be watered down. This doesn't even cover issues like scheduling difficulties the DII schools will have; the loss to kids (both public and private) of the benefits of interaction with kids from different environments and settings; the likelihood that the privates will eventually tire of having their rules dictated to them by public school officials who have ostracized them; the revenue and facility issues that would be confronted (by all schools public and private) if all the private schools eventually formed their own separate association; kids (both public and private) knowing that their "championships" are not as meaningful because they aren't really playing all the comparable competition; and any number of other eventualities that could flow from what I personally think is a short-sighted idea. My prior posts reveal that I am an FRA follower. When the FRA girls basketball team split games this year with CPA, Hume Fogg, Pearl Cohn, and Station Camp, it didn't matter one bit to those girls whether the other team was a public school or a private school. When Hume Fogg ended their season, they didn't sit around and moan that Hume Fogg had some sort of "unfair advantage" because it is a magnet school. The girls were playing basketball, and they were visiting gyms and competing against other girls from different communities and different backgrounds in different settings. It was a valuable part of their education and preparation for life as an adult. They didn't win a state championship -- they didn't even make it out of their district tournament. But they got the important benefits of high school athletic competition. I'm glad for the girls on all those teams that they had those opportunities. We have a pretty good system of high school athletic competition. I sure hope the adults don't screw that up for the kids.

No, actually, the number of schools in each of the 3 public classes would be based on the decision to only have three classes so that each class could have about 100 schools. There could just as easily be 10 public classes, but the decision makers wouldn't do that to themselves because they don't want to water their championships down that much. But in your model, the private schools wouldn't have that choice. Your candor in the rest of this post is laudable -- privates need to be banished to DII because they win too much, regardless of why. I may disagree that separation is wise, but at least I appreciate the honesty of this position a lot more than the various efforts to rationalize separation based on "unfair advantages" that don't really hold up under close scrutiny.

I agree with you, fewer classes are better. My proposal for 10 public school classes was a facetious suggestion. But in your haste to defend what you support for the public schools, perhaps you don't see the inconsistency that I see in your proposal. While you laud the idea of only a few large classes for the public schools, your classification scheme would leave about 65 private schools in two small classes. Why is it that larger classes are better for the publics, but smaller ones are okay for the privates? While we're at it, here are a few statements that I think are true: 1. In some instances, parents of an athletically gifted child move into a particular public school zone so that their child can attend that school for athletic reasons. 2. The price of tuition is a barrier to private school enrollment. 3. Private schools require admission exams, zoned public schools do not. 4. The academic requirements for retention in many private schools are more rigorous than they are in many public schools. 5. Most private schools are located in or around metropolitan areas where they compete with many other private schools, zoned public schools, and magnet schools for students. 6. In the Nashville area, many families move to Sumner County or Williamson County so that their children can attend public schools that they believe are superior to the Metro Nashville schools. 7. Grades K through 6 are the grades when the vast majority of kids attending private schools initially enroll in those schools. 8. In general, schools (both public and private) do not recruit children for athletic purposes, although individual instances of recruiting do happen on occasion. 9. In general, private DI schools do not make admission decisions based on athletic ability or prowess. In light of these things that I believe to be truths, I still keep returning to the question I asked weeks ago on this board -- if a DI private school that doesn't recruit or base admissions on athletic prowess has 300 students, and a public school has 300 students, where is the inherent "advantage" that is "unfair"? Oh, never mind, this is just more of my "mumbo jumbo." I'm sure that somewhere along the way, someone has authoritatively declared what the real "unfair advantage" is; and it couldn't possibly be that things like coaching, hard work, commitment, and good fortune make any difference when it comes to winning and losing in sports.

If the justification for DII in the first place was financial aid, then how is it fair to the DI privates to dissolve that differentiation once all are in DII and just go back to enrollment-based classifications within DII? It is sad to hear those who are just looking for an easier path to championship glory rationalize their way into banishing a small handful of successful programs (along with all the other privates) that stand in their way. Sort of like the "separate but equal" argument for high school sports. I wouldn't bet that this sort of thinking will end with complete separation of public and private schools. Once the DI privates are out of the way, then we'll have to figure out what to do with the magnets. And once they're gone, next will come open-zoned systems like Memphis. Somewhere along the way, we'll have to divide further based on rural/urban differences. Every loss can be rationalized by pointing to some mystical "advantage" that is labeled "unfair." Of course, those who bemoan their "disadvantages" the loudest usually avoid invitations to truly analyze all the respective "advantages" and "disadvantages" to see how it really balances out. For competiton "victims" in this public/private debate, it must be a little disquieting to admit that things like tuition costs and academic standards for admission and retention may actually be disadvantages for private schools (see, e.g., Vanderbilt University versus the eleven state universities in the SEC). It is a little difficult to explain how the purportedly large pool of potential applicants really has any effect when you consider all the other school choices and options available to that large pool, all the barriers (financial and academic) the kids in that pool must confront, and the absence of any evidence that private schools are making admissions decisions based on athletic ability. It's hard to admit that successful programs are often marked by things like better coaching, school leaders who do better jobs of motivating kids, harder off-season work by kids, greater commitment by kids, and greater parental involvement and interest, because to admit that those are difference-makers is to admit that perhaps some schools just do a better job with what they have rather than winning based on this mysterious "unfair advantage." I've got an idea. After we get the privates out of the way (who, by the way, may wonder how public school administrators should continue to make and enforce rules applicable to private schools, if private school athletics are so incredibly different that they must be banished to an entirely separate division simply because they are private), then let's take the 300 or so publics that are left and divide them into 10 classifications of 30 schools each. Each classification can have a watered-down state championship. We may have to destroy a lot of traditional rivalries and revamp the way the schools do things, but what the heck -- if it's so good that it's okay to force the privates into a similar setup, then the publics shouldn't mind the same thing for themselves. And just think how much easier it will be to win championships with so many of them.

Seems a bit unrealistic to me. In football, TSSAA rules require all the teams in the region to play each other in the regular season. In the other sports, regular season competition within districts and regions is not mandated, but it is scheduled as a practical matter because it makes sense and facilitates seeding of the postseason tournaments. Without TSSAA rules or tournament seeding to prompt them, it is hard to imagine that the same publics that want to move all the privates into DII would nonetheless be happy to schedule regular season games with those privates. After all, who wants to schedule a game with a school that you feel has "unfair advantages"?

If you care about what goes on in DII, I would say you are probably in the minority of those public school people who support the idea of a complete split. I suppose we can go on forever with this -- as the length of this thread reflects. At the end of the day, you won't be convinced that anything short of a complete public/private split is fair, and I won't be convinced that there are inherent private school "advantages" to justify such a split. There are some great high school basketball tournaments going on now. I think I'll check on those and leave this endless debate to someone else.

How much do the public school folks who want a complete split really care about what goes on in DII right now? Do you really think they will care any more about what becomes of the non-aid privates once they're shoved off to DII? Do you really think the aid-giving privates in DII want the non-aid privates just so there will be another classification within DII that doesn't even compete with the existing schools there?

Of course, a complete public/private split would double the size of DII and give the existing DII schools the benefits of more schools, such as easier scheduling and less travel. Do you think Carlton Flatt might have been speaking more out of self-interest, as a DII coach and AD, than out of real concern for what goes on in DI? Whatever his motives, I'm not sure that Flatt is particularly qualified to judge the "advantages" that DI private schools have.

Okay, I'll bite. I hope Erin Colbert from FRA gets some consideration for regular season district honors. Blew out ACL in last game of district tournament last year, spent summer rehabing after surgery. Second in district (behind CPA's Hardeman) in 3's made according to Tennessean chart; gave FRA a true outside threat to complement the post game of Canady and Jackson. Not flashy, but solid game after game -- scores some points, a couple of steals each game, creates tie-ups, gets loose balls, good help defense, boxes out, rebounds, handles the ball, makes good passes and good decisions. Had a handful of big scoring games. One of those kinds of players who often would wind up never coming out of the game because of the value of her all-around contributions and smart, heady play.

I'm not familiar with most of these schools, although if memory serves me correctly, Unaka won the TSSAA Class A boys' state basketball championship about four years ago. That was pre-multiplier, and Unaka beat FRA in the opening round of the state tournament. I'm pretty sure that is the only year in the last nine that the FRA boys made it to the state tournament (maybe the only year ever, but I wouldn't know about the years before 2000). The FRA girls made it to the Class AA girls' state basketball tournament in 2006, losing in the first round to York Institute (which I think of as a small school, certainly public and certainly rural). If you just want to talk football, then I suspect FRA would struggle against every one of these small public schools. I'm sure someone has a reason why these examples should be disregarded.

This seems a little simplistic. What is the basis for the assumption that 10% of the people in the metro area can afford private school? Of the people who can afford it, how many have kids? Is your 100,000 figure inclusive of both adults and kids? How many of these people are kids in grades 7-12? If we don't know these things, then what do these numbers mean? And whatever the number of school age kids there may be in the metro area from families that can afford private school tuition, how realistic is it to say that any particular school could draw "every one of those kids"? One of the realities of a metropolitan area is that a private school has a lot of competition for students, from other private schools and from public schools. A lot of metro area families looking for better school options than what they find in Nashville don't chose private schools. Instead they move to Sumner and Williamson counties for the public schools there. And in the metro area, how many private and parochial schools do you suppose there are attempting to draw from this same pool of kids? 15 or more? Realistically, even factoring out the public school competition, you probably have to cut down substantially the number of families that most schools are likely to draw from based on geography and the existence of other private school options closer to home. A kid in south Davidson County might go to Brentwood Academy or FRA, but he's probably not too likely to travel across town to attend Goodpasture or DCA. A kid in Mt. Juliet might attend DCA, but he's not likely to travel over to Davidson Academy. A kid in west Nashville may go to MBA, but he probably won't go to Ezell Harding. It could happen, and occasionally it may, but it's not very likely. And don't forget that in addition to the monetary barrier to entry in private school, there are also admission exams. Not all of the kids whom a school could "draw" can do well enough on those exams to be admitted. I think that realistically, the pool of families that a given private school in metro Nashville is likely to be able to draw kids from is substantially smaller than what you postulate.