The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association is bringing two major changes to how schools are classified statewide starting in 2020.
The association’s Representative Assembly passed a proposal Monday at its Winter Coalition meeting in Renton to drop its current classification system based on balanced percentages in favor of fixed enrollment numbers.
Also Monday, the assembly approved a proposal to allow schools, in an attempt to create a competitive balance in less-affluent areas, to use free or reduced lunch rates to decrease enrollment for every 1 percent they are above the state’s reduced lunch-rate average.
Both changes go into effect the 2020-21 school year.
The new fixed classification are set across all six classifications: 1,300 or more for Class 4A, 900-1,299 for 3A, 450-899 for 2A, 225-449 for 1A, 105-224 for 2B and 1-104 for 1B. Schools can still choose to opt-up in classification.
Hard-count numbers isn’t a new process. Before the 2006-07 school year, the WIAA used fixed numbers before switching to its current system of percentage to create equal balance.
The second amendment factors in socioeconomics for the first time. Schools in Class 4A through 1A can choose to reduce its enrollment for every 1 percent they are above the reduced lunch-rate average statewide of 42.4 percent. The percentage a school can drop caps at 40.
Woodland athletic director Paul Huddleston has been on the classification committee for two years and instrumental in creating both amendments. He called Monday’s news “a good first step” to creating more fair, competitive balance across Washington’s classifications.
“It shows that our state is willing to make change and to try to find a way to make things more fair,” he said.
“There’s no perfect system, and we’re not going to know how it works until we live it. It’s going to take time. … There’s a conscious effort made to even the playing field and that’s a good thing because there’s definitely a case of haves and have-nots right now.”
The next four-year classification cycle starts in 2020-21. Classifications numbers are determined by enrollment in grades 9-11, counts that come from the Office of Public Instruction.
It’s too early to say what impact, if any, the newly passed amendments will have on Southwest Washington schools until enrollment numbers for the next classification cycle are finalized next school year. But one school on the 3A/2A bubble in 2016 — Columbia River — and is headed that way again, said the school’s athletic director, Tony Liberatore.
“They’ll be close,” he said of the school’s 9-11 enrollment count.
