We’re entering the final months of a unique period in the N.C. High School Athletic Association, a time when classification wasn’t determined solely by enrollment but a formula that accounted for all-sports success and affluence.

It’s done a pretty good job of balancing the field.

Not only are parochial and charter schools are winning a smaller share of titles over the last three years of this current period than the one that came before it — but there’s also greater parity among the public schools that win.

However, the book has closed on giving the formula a try in an eight-class setting.

But enrollment is not the only determining factor in how good a school can be at athletics.

There are many examples of this in public school.

Some 2,000-student schools field football and basketball teams that wouldn’t sniff even a 1A state title.

Some 900-student schools field soccer or volleyball teams that can hang with anyone. The same holds true in baseball, softball, and a host of other sports.

If Wake County Public Schools opened up a small, 500-student high school that only drew from a few neighborhoods in Cary, you can bet that school would be dominant in 1A soccer, volleyball, baseball, tennis, cross country, and might snag a few more titles in other sports too. Students in suburban areas are just more likely to have been playing a sport at a younger age than students in rural areas.

In other words, that school would be talented at the same things the town is talented in.

We should think of competitive balance as a matter of zip codes, not strictly school size.

I remember a few soccer championships in which a 4A, 2A, and 1A finalist from the same 11-mile stretch of road went to the state finals in a two-year span. Zip codes matter!

But at the same time, we can’t ignore school type, and as of now we basically have three types of schools in the NCHSAA — charter, parochial, and traditional publics.

(First, click here if you’re unsure what a charter or parochial school is, plus a full list of them in the NCHSAA.)

If a charter or parochial school from a metro area is placed into a classification based on its size, that’s only telling half the story. The other half was accounted for in the current formula, but that’s on the way out.

So what should NCHSAA schools propose, and perhaps just as important, what should they not try to propose to deal with parochial and charter schools?

I’ve got some ideas, but you’re probably wondering why you should trust me (if 17 years of covering high school athletics in this state wasn’t good enough).

For starters, I’ve talked to people from all sides of this issue with an open mind. I’ve also lived a little on each side. I’m from the sticks of the Sandhills, a proud graduate of a rural public school in a county that still has no NCHSAA championships in any team sport. Some of my finest work is telling stories from places as out-of-the-way as it gets. Yet I’m also recently a charter school parent and a parochial school employee, and my first job out of college was covering athletics in one of the state’s wealthiest areas.

It’s hard to find people like me who have seen all perspectives like that.

And throughout, I can’t find the bad guy in all of it — just a lot of people wishing a solution were easy to find so they can put this to bed.

I think I’ve got a few good solutions, so let’s take a look.

The ground rules

Before I really get into what I think should happen when it comes to NCHSAA bylaws, let’s establish what dead-end ideas column will not be suggesting.

Rule #1: No one gets kicked out. Some might stop reading here, but kicking anyone out seems destined to lose a lawsuit. It’d also make for a very short column.

Rule #2: No one gets accused of wrongdoing. Too many coaches and fans have a handy flowchart set up in their mind. If an opponent is losing, they’re doing things the right way over there — good people! If they’re winning, then they must’ve cheated somehow! Just remember that imaginary 500-student public school in Cary. They’d win at an extremely high clip for reasons they had no control over.

Rule #3: No completely separate classifications. I’m not ruling out a subdivided class, but I also don’t know that the massive charter schools need to be kept with the mid-sized ones. And if you keep some schools completely split out from the rest of the NCHSAA, how would you make sure you weren’t treating that separate class as the red-headed stepchild? (Apologies to the redheads. You’re cool with me. Same for you, stepchildren.)

Rule #4: Nothing is done to “open-enrollment” or “magnet” schools. It’s silly that people even keep mentioning these two groups as if they win state titles at the same rate as parochial or charter schools. Are you that worried about Louisburg taking over 2A? Did Athens Drive win a slew of 4A titles once adding a magnet program? Millbrook added a magnet program a decade or so ago — its school profile has been about the same since 2004. Its best sports then are basically still its best sports now. There’s just no proof of why these schools need to be of equal concern and I’d argue it muddies the waters too much.

Rule #5: We’re not going to pretend the state legislature will absolutely not accept a targeted change that makes for better competition in rural areas. This isn’t 2010 anymore. Republican John Bell, the Speaker of the N.C. House, has spoken about and proposed bills that literlaly aimed to move some charter schools out of 1A (the bill was scrapped because it went way too far, putting many into what would be 8A next year). I don’t want to hear that the legislature wouldn’t like something that singled out charter or parochial schools, when the legislature literally singled out charter schools less than two years ago. The door is open to make a change that everyone can live with. I would guess many politicians, especially ones who might have supporters who like charter schools and those who like rural traditional public schools, might appreciate someone else taking this issue off the table for them.

Rule #6: The goal is not to make it impossible for charter and parochial schools to win titles. The question many coaches don’t know how to answer is “how many charter/parochial titles would be an acceptable amount?” Because once you accept the reality of Rule #1, you have to figure out what’s best for competition. Competition — as in what will be competitive — not competition as in “where can we put these schools so they struggle and never win anything again?”

Rule #7: Leave the state-run schools alone. NCSSM-Morganton and NCSSM-Durham, as well as the two schools for the deaf, should be exempt from any rule. You can’t encourage your own students to apply there and then complain when they win a cross country or tennis title.

Parochial solution: Multiplier

You may not get why so many states have parochial schools in their associatons, but I’ll keep this history lesson short.

Most states mixed them together from the outset because, for one, there were a lot more of them then (Catholic school numbers have plummeted nationally since 1959) and, for two, they are structured more like public schools (with feeder schools, etc.) than today’s independent and charter schools are. It was viewed then about like having Duke and UNC in the same college conference.

In the 1990s, specialization took over youth sports. Capitalizing on athletic opportunities became more linked to affluence.

By the simple nature of being a school that charges tuition, the zip codes associated these schools are in club sports hotbeds. It’s only natural that Bishop McGuinness and Christ the King are the two of the eight 1A teams with boys lacrosse.

And, because these schools only have a certain number of seats per grade, their enrollment is not subject to the growth of suburban or metro areas the way other members are.

The NCHSAA has never used a multiplier, but it’s been bandied about.

Let’s say the multiplier was something simple, like 1.5.

Then both Gibbons and Catholic would be in 8A while Bishop and CTK would go to 3A.

Let’s say it was more tiered, like Nick Stevens’ 2020 proposal (which is worth revisiting if you can read it through an old four-class lens).

What if it were based on the county’s poplulation rank, with the largest county (Wake) getting a 2.0 multiplier and the smallest one (Tyrrell) getting a 1.01 multiplier?

Then it would take Gibbons to 8A with a 2.0 multiplier, Charlotte Catholic to 8A with a 1.99 multiplier, Bishop McGuinness to 4A with a 1.97 multiplier, and Christ the King to 4A with a 1.91 multiplier (Christ the King is in Cabarrus County).

All would be in better fits, not only for conferences, but also for what level they can expect to compete at across almost every sport they offer.

Charter solution: Subdividing

There will be 58 charter schools in the NCHSAA next fall, and we’re getting to where we can expect about 3-5 new ones to join each year.

Expect even more.

There are more than 200 charter schools — I’m including ones without high schools — in North Carolina. For comparison, there are just seven in the entire state of Virginia.

And there are basically two types of charter schools.

Some charter schools have lengthy waitlists and tend to only do as well as the surrounding area does in certain sports. Pine Lake Prep sits just north of Davidson, Lake Norman Charter sits just south of Davidson, and Community School of Davidson is, you guessed it, in Davidson.

Those three schools can, at times, look like smaller versions of Hough High (the closest traditional high school to Davidson). That’s not their fault that small versions of Hough should naturally win big at 3A, 2A, and 1A.

Then there are others that don’t have lengthy waitlists and have open seats pretty much each year. This means they’re likely to struggle in sports their surrounding area excels in, because they’re not getting a good enough population sample — but it also means a super team can arise in just a few years if some of the only people applying for the lottery are talented players in a single sport.

Next year there will be charters in 4A and 3A, but most will be in 2A and 1A.

The best way forward here is to subdivide for some select bracketed sports in 2A and 1A. There are some sports where there won’t be enough charter schools to subdivide (like the new 1A in softball) or not enough public schools to subdivide (like the new 2A in girls tennis).

So the subdividing rule could go something like this…

If there a classification has an almost equal number of charter and traditional public schools that participate in a sport, the sport is subdivided. We’ll call it anything that’s in that “middle third” — the splits should be under 66.6 percent for one side but over 33.3 percent for the other.

If it’s outside of those parameters — let’s say a class has only 10 percent charters or only 25 percent traditional public schools — they play under one umbrella. You can’t have even a subdivided bracket if you’re working with less than a third of a class.

That would keep us from needlessly splitting up, titles where there’s not much participation on both sides, but also recognizing that there are times when it makes sense to split the brackets when participation is high.

What do other states do?

I’m not one to always go to what other states do.

It sounds too much like that new kid in class who starts every sentence with “At my old school we did ___.”

Besides, there aren’t a lot of states out there that mirror us in terms of geography and make-up. But nothing wrong with borrowing an idea and tweaking it, right?

Some states have their own versions of a mutiplier formula, like Alabama and Arkansas.

South Carolina recently determined to triple-count students that are from outside a school’s “district.” It meant defining that for all schools (not just charters and parochials) and then applying it to all.

Florida once split classes along an urban/rural divide, then went back to seven classes with a small rural one.

Georgia had a multiplier then got rid of it. It has also split its smallest class in a similar way.

Texas has a slew of restrictions on charters and parochial schools to dissuade them from even joining. We’re too far past that point, I think.

California, which doesn’t have one singular state champion in any sport because it’s so big, has an “open” division where the 8-10 best teams regardless of size make a playoff field. Just getting a berth is prestigious. The rest of the brackets are filled out afterward.

Nevada, last I saw, has multipliers based on each sport. You could, in theory, be 7A in baseball and 5A in swimming.

Believe it or not, the NCHSAA was given a recommendation to do something similar — in 2012.

Bishop McGuinness girls basketball coach Brian Robinson was even quoted as looking forward to it passing.

But it never passed.

The reasoning? Moving a team up a class might make one set of schools happy, but someone else would be upset!

I can’t say that dynamic has changed much.

It’s gotten worse as the years have let angst fester.

Again, I don’t think there are bad people on any side here.

But I also don’t think we can go another 13 years without a bylaw that attempts to address the state’s hottest hot-button topic.