For the second straight meeting, the N.C. High School Athletic Association Board of Directors was asked to address the perceived advantages of charter and parochial schools over traditional public schools in the state playoffs.

The N.C. School Boards Association sent the board of directors a letter on April 1, supporting a tabled proposal from the December board meeting that would separate charter and parochial schools into their own playoff brackets.

“Fair competition is the foundation of public school athletics, yet a clear disparity has emerged. Charter and private schools are dominating NCHSAA state championships, particularly in the smaller classifications,” the letter from NCSBA Executive Director Leanne Winner said.

NCHSAA President Dr. Stephen Gainey, the superintendent for Randolph County Schools, said he received the letter by email. It was discussed at the board meeting this week in Chapel Hill, but no action was taken.

The proposal submitted to the board in December came from Nash Central High School’s Dr. Jonathan Tribula, who suggested the NCHSAA reserve six playoff brackets for schools with traditional attendance boundaries, while schools without those boundaries would go to their own playoff brackets.

The proposal did not specifically call out charter or parochial schools, leaving it open to interpretation about which schools would be considered to have attendance boundaries. For example, magnet schools and early colleges, which are part of traditional public school districts, do not always have traditional attendance boundaries.

The letter from the NCSBA specifically mentioned charter and parochial schools and said magnet schools have clearly defined geographic boundaries.

The issue is not so simple for the board of directors and the NCHSAA staff. Gainey said on Wednesday that the board needs more time to look at the issue before making any changes if any are needed.

“The first thing was to get the realignment done … the calendar had to come next, then the playoff structure. Those were three big priorities, and to do something that’s being talked about now with charter schools and parochial schools, which is what the information is referencing, that’s more than an overnight turn. That has a lot of implications,” Gainey said.

In December, some board members, including Gainey, raised concerns that separating schools into different playoff brackets based on their attendance zones would violate the new bylaw member schools voted to adopt, which classifies schools based solely on their enrollment numbers. Whether or not a school has a traditional attendance boundary is not part of an enrollment figure. There are also concerns about whether or not the NCHSAA could make such a decision without the State Board of Education involved.

While the board has heard from some member schools that are concerned about charter and parochial schools and the potential competitive advantages they may have, Gainey says there are many more schools the board has not heard from, including the charter and parochial schools.

“We’ve gotta be real careful here because we’ve made a structure in this membership. Charter schools are a part of our membership, and they have been. (Uwharrie Charter) in our county has been there since the year I came to the Randolph County School System, they’ve been open 12 years now, they’re in our conference,” Gainey said. “We have charter schools that are very active members in our membership, and we’ve made that work. To turn and go in a different direction would be a project that needs a lot of careful thought, a lot of attention to detail, and a lot of study to see if we’re going to create an unintended consequence.”

Gainey said the board has a responsibility to consider the needs of all member schools, including charter and parochial schools, “because they’re members too.”

“I’m going to stay in the middle of the road and try to figure out with the board and with the staff what we need to do, if anything, because they’re member schools too,” he said.

This is not the first time the NCHSAA has been asked to look at competitive advantages for charter and parochial schools.

In 2012, a bylaw amendment proposal was brought forward to the member schools for a vote. Parochial schools would have been removed from the NCHSAA and charter schools would have been sent to their own playoff brackets, but the vote failed to garner enough support.

As a result of the amendment proposal, the NCHSAA launched a pair of committees to look at competitive advantages that may exist and find ways to level the playing field while allowing all schools to continue to participate. Those committees have not met since the COVID-19 pandemic though.

“Those committees have not been reformed or reinstituted. Do we need to bring that group back in? I think again, if we’re going to bring that group back in, we would need to do it with the guidance of not only our legal folks, but with the State Board of Education,” Tucker said. “When that committee was put into place, it was primarily to address the charter schools and the non-boarding parochial schools. Now we have more of those non-traditional schools, and how do you address them?”

Tucker pointed specifically to magnet schools and early colleges.

“How do you address Winston-Salem Prep, that everybody thinks is a charter school, but it is one of non-traditional schools that is part of Winston-Salem Forsyth (County Schools), just as an example. So, we can talk about that as we move forward, but I think it’s not just the association making that decision, we now will need to do that in concert with the State Board of Education,” she said.

However, the NCSBA says it stands by the request to create separate playoff brackets for charter and parochial schools.

“To ensure a level playing field, it is time to establish separate playoff brackets. With a sufficient number of charter and private schools, they can fairly compete amongst themselves. Therefore, NCSBA respectfully urges the NCHSAA to prohibit charter and private schools from competing in the same state playoff brackets as district schools,” the NCSBA’s letter to the NCHSAA board concludes.

According to the NCHSAA, there are 442 member schools this school year, 57 of which are charter schools. There are four parochial schools.