VALDOSTA —

VALDOSTA — The reclassification and re-alignment in the Georgia High School Association may not be over yet. At least if some high school principals, athletic directors and coaches have their way.

With the recent moves made by the GHSA, the states primary governing body for high school athletics, one thing remained the same throughout the entire process: private and public high schools will continue to compete against each other, especially at the Class A level, which features over 35 private high schools in the classification alone.

With the ruling that private and public schools will continue to compete against each other, several Class A public high schools are set to meet today in Wilcox County to discuss the possibility of leaving the GHSA and joining an indendent, public school league that would be established by the GISA.

“That is what this meeting is all about,” Lanier County athletic director John White said. “How many schools are interested in withdrawing and how many of them can get school board approval to withdraw from the GHSA.”

The announcement to keep public and private schools competing against each other came after several attempts by the public high schools at the Class A level, the states lowest classification, to create a new plan that would allow for private and public schools to compete against each other throughout the regular season, but compete seperately in postseason play. The drawn up plan would have resulted in a private and public school champion for each individual sport.

According to Donnie Clack, Director of Athletics at Wilcox County High School, the Class A public schools have been meeting with the GHSA since January in an attempt to adopt a plan that would allow both types of schools to remain in the same classification.

“We had a meeting in January here in Wilcox (County), and we have been up and down the road,” Clack said. “We have been in eight to 10 meetings and (the GHSA) still hasn’t done anything about it...The only option is to pull out of the GHSA.

“Something needs to be done. Florida did it. I am not sure how long ago they did it, but they did. They finally got it split,” Clack continued. “There is nothing fair about where these big private schools are located at...If private schools are charging $19,000 dollars, and they are telling a kid that he can go there and he doesn’t have to pay tuition, isn’t that wrong? You have two pages in the GHSA white book about recruiting, but what is that? Georgia High School has no regulations on recruiting.”

The decision to keep the private and public schools together, and essentially veto the proposed plan by the public Class A schools, came after a vote by the GHSA executive board, according to Alan Ingram, who serves as the Director of Athletics at Seminole County High School.

“The thing was voted down and out,” Ingram said. “I believe the Class A people feel like the three, four, five classification folks don’t really care about the Class A people all that much. We felt like it was worked out if the GHSA would have just gone along with it.”

Although today’s scheduled meeting will not officially determine the actions of the public schools, as each individual school board would have to vote on leaving the GHSA, the meeting is expected to be attended by officials from 30-60 Class A public high schools, all of whom have been invited by Wilcox County High principal Chad Davis, who has been given much of the credit for putting together the meeting and leading the charge out of the GHSA.

According to White, who also serves as the head football coach at Lanier County, if school boards to decide to leave the GHSA the moves would be effective immediately. White, who says he himself supports the move to leave the GHSA, also said he will be at today’s meeting, willing to hear the plans that other schools may have drawn up and to see how many schools are willing to “take the next step”, which he believes would mean withdrawing from the association.

At Irwin County, head football coach John Lindsay said he is discussing the move with school adminstrators. Lindsay went on to call the situation between the private and public schools “a problem”.

“We are kind of in the middle, as in what way we would go,” Lindsay said. “We will probably attend the meeting just to see what the imput is...But, I am not for leaving the GHSA. I just want the situation fixed. If I could recruit Tifton, Fitzgerald, Douglass and Valdosta and then pick a football team, I could pick a pretty good one. To me, that is what is going on in private schools.”

Every school in the GHSA pays a membership fee back to the assocation, which is based upon school enrollment numbers. Schools with larger enrollments pay a larger fee. A school competing at the Class A level is believed to pay around a $375 annual fee for membership, plus the schools are required to forfeit 12 percent of all earnings they make from sanctioned GHSA postseason events.

“I rarely, if ever, deal in hypothetical situations,” Ralph Swearengin, Executive Director of the GHSA said when asked about the possible departure of the schools. “When you start dealing with hypotheticals people start taking them with a degree of certainty.”

Swearengin went on to say that a school’s decision to be a member of the GHSA is completely voluntary, and that they are not required to be a member.

“Anyone, at any given time, can leave the organization if the association is not meeting their needs,” Swearengin said.

Today’s meeting is set to begin at 10 a.m. at the Wilcox County Agricultural Center. The meeting is open to the public.