Holmes moving to 4A?

[Fishhead]

Or they play Ryle 3 times.

 

 

:jump::ylsuper::laugh:

[BaseballIsLife]

:jump::ylsuper::laugh:

 

Trinity, St. X, Herbstreit game anybody?

[YepItsMe]

One thing I heard in Dec was that the enrollment numbers for Holmes was including the Jr High. So the 8th graders were being counted as part of the HS. Not sure how true that is but if it is/was the case then it is not fair. Going down to 4A changes things a good bit for Holmes.

 

8th grade numbers are not including in the count but Alternative school numbers are......

[leatherneck]

8th grade numbers are not including in the count but Alternative school numbers are......

 

Are boys in the Alternative schools even eligible to participate in football? Maybe it isn't the Alternative schools, but I remember hearing/reading somewhere that there are kids in certain programs that count in the enrollment figure, but kids in those programs are ineligible to play sports. Is that accurate and I wonder how many programs throughout the state have a large number of kids in that category. If Holmes has large number of boys in that situation, it could make their request even more justifiable (although the 12% plus drop is sufficient in and of itself).

 

Guru, I am also aware from a reliable source that Holmes enrollment dropped by 12% or more and that the KHSAA earlier had allowed schools with enrollment changes of 12% to move classes for the upcoming season, so it doesn't appear the KHSAA did anything improper here. The only "rub" is that the change happened so late in the scheduling season. I'm told that the schools in Holmes new district, while not pleased to be in the position of having to change their schedules at this point, are handling the situation with class and will be meeting together in the near future to work things out. Major kudos to those schools and their coaches and administrators for handling the situation in a spirit of cooperation.

[C-BOY78]

Now that Holmes has move to 4A maybe CovCath and Highlands should move down to make a all NKY district to include Pendleton County.

Remember both CovCath and Highlands play up and one of the reason was it made a all

NKY 5A district

[Theoldguy]

Well if Holmes and Scott move to 4A then I would think CovCath and Highlands should/could move to 4A also. Why not? CovCath is a 4A size school and Highlands is a 3A size school, so why not play football in the level of school enrollment that you belong in now that there might be some teams from NKy in the 4A division! Think about that one Holmes/Scott fans

[theguru]

lneck,

 

I agree the timing is very poor. Holmes should have worked on this long ago to avoid putting multiple other schools in a bind just so Holmes could move down.

 

Think about it, not only do the 5A schools have to find replacement games, the 4A district schools have to boot a team off of their schedule and all of those schools that get booted have to find a replacement game too.

[C-BOY78]

If Holmes was competeting in it current distict would have tried to move.

Also timing could not have come at a worst time, my understanding is that all the schools had there schedule completed. I believe the KHSAA has opened a can of worms.

Edited January 15, 2009 by bugatti

[leatherneck]

lneck,

 

I agree the timing is very poor. Holmes should have worked on this long ago to avoid putting multiple other schools in a bind just so Holmes could move down.

 

Think about it, not only do the 5A schools have to find replacement games, the 4A district schools have to boot a team off of their schedule and all of those schools that get booted have to find a replacement game too.

 

I had thought of that already.

[leatherneck]

If Holmes was competeting in it current distict would have tried to move.

Also timing could not have come at a worst time, my understanding is that all the schools had there schedule completed. I believe the KHSAA has opened a can of worms.

 

Agreed about the scheduling point, but I've been told that at least the schools in the new district (some of which were supposedly in attendance at yesterday's meeting), while not happy about the problems caused, have been very gracious and are handling the matter with true class. Don't know how the 5A schools in Holmes former district feel about needing to now find a new game. It's possible that one or more of them may still be able to keep Holmes on the schedule because the KHSAA has waived the district scheduling grid on this situation to ease the scheduling problems as much as possible. Plus, if the KHSAA had told Holmes "no" for this year and if they approved the move for next year, you would have had schools needing to break the second year of the two year contracts and had schools trying to find one year contracts which may have been even harder.

 

Again, I am not arguing that the timing wasn't bad, really bad, but hopefully the schedules can get worked out with only minimal problems. It's way too early for anyone to determine if this was a can of worms or not.

 

As for your first point (or at least what I think is the first point you are trying to make), I have no clue if Holmes would have made this request if they had been more competitive in their existing district. Pure speculation to argue such would have been the case.

 

Bottom line is that we have classes in football because of the pretty much universal belief that enrollment size plays a large role in the competitiveness of a program. With Holmes being the smallest 5A school (other than Highlands whom requested the move up) and still having 20 something 4A schools larger than it, Holmes belongs being in 4A.

 

Scheduling problems will result, no doubt, but in the interest of fairness to the schools and the kids, those are problems that will just have to be dealt with. I'm told that the KHSAA yesterday will move the consolidated Muhlenberg school into 6A (if the merger is finally approved by KDE which its expected to be) for 09/10. With that happening, the schedules of the two to-be consolidated Muhlenberg schools will be vacated and a new schedule put in place. Such will surely cause problems for the schools on the existing two schedules, but aren't those problems better than allowing a 6A size school to compete in either the 4A or 3A classification, with the resulting unfairness to the other schools competing in those classes?

 

If you wonder why the difference in how Muhlenberg is being handled and the way Mercer was handled, the difference is that the Muhlenberg consolidation will happen supposedly at the beginning of the two year contract cycle and Mercer happened in the middle of the two year cycle.

 

Again, I don't mean to understate the work involved for all the schools affected by Holmes move. But at this point it's too early to say the sky is falling. I do know from being on the football coaches list serve, there are a fair number of schools still looking for games, which gives me some optimism. Plus it's possible that some of the 5A schools affected by this move may be able to play some of the schools required to be dropped by the schools in the 4A district Holmes in moving into.

 

Not a perfect solution for sure, but in my opinion, the advantages of allowing the kids at Holmes to compete in the class that they truly belong outweigh the scheduling problems associated with the move if you subscribe to the philosophy of "size matters" which is what the classification of football is predicated on.

[ft bronc]

Open Enrollment right now is really hurting Scott. Just in general, whether it be for athletic or academic reasons, graduated middle school students are choosing to go elsewhere instead of Scott and their numbers are hurting right now.

 

When my son entered Scott, the number of students were estimated to be about 1200. By his Senior year, that number dwindled down to just under 1100. Do you know what this years is? I've heard Scott has roughly 1000 students now. Scott had to cut 7 teachers this year because of the decrease in students and may have to cut more if this continues. Scott is really hurting right now and with this open enrollment policy and recent trends, it doesn't seem likely that anything will improve.

 

Sorry to be off-topic, but I couldn't pass on this examaple of exactly why open-rollment, school-choice or whatever you want to call it is a GOOD thing. If students weren't leaving due to open-enrollment policies at other schools/districts, what motivation would Scott have to improve? They could continue to provide what apparently at least a couple hundred families feel is an inferior educational product, and the kids would have no other public school option. If Scott doesn't like what's happening, then they should improve themselves! Improve their academics, improve their athletics, improve their extracurriculars. Competition is always a good thing!

[leatherneck]

Sorry to be off-topic, but I couldn't pass on this examaple of exactly why open-rollment, school-choice or whatever you want to call it is a GOOD thing. If students weren't leaving due to open-enrollment policies at other schools/districts, what motivation would Scott have to improve? They could continue to provide what apparently at least a couple hundred families feel is an inferior educational product, and the kids would have no other public school option. If Scott doesn't like what's happening, then they should improve themselves! Improve their academics, improve their athletics, improve their extracurriculars. Competition is always a good thing!

 

Folks, I promise that ft bronc is not me under some other name. He/she just happens to look at this issue exactly the same way, although I'm not sure it's educational reasons why students are leaving Scott. Heck, I have no idea why they are leaving Scott, but I can assure you that if I was the principal at Scott I'd be spending a lot of time trying to find out.

[colonel-fan]

I'm glad to see Holmes moving away from CovCath/Highlands. I've made the case in the past that it was to Holmes' detriment to be in a district allowing CovCath and Highlands to play up in class.

[RoadRunner]

Now that Holmes has move to 4A maybe CovCath and Highlands should move down to make a all NKY district to include Pendleton County.

Remember both CovCath and Highlands play up and one of the reason was it made a all

NKY 5A district

 

 

If that I happened (and I know it won't,,, at least anytime soon) Tom Spritzky would be the happiest guy in NKY Football.

[Tall Trees]

This is going to cause alot of schools problems as most people have had there schedules done for a very long time. This should have been done a long time ago. Good luck to all the coaches that have to find games and move people around.