Public 3 Private 1(No crying from the private side)

[anderson2012]

lol OHSAA will lose WAY too much money, will never happen. You dont get much from 14 parents, 100 students and 4 nuns and a priest at the tourney games.

You just described South Point's crowd against Portsmouth last year @ the Convo, minus the priest & nuns. Bigotry is a vehicle for the narrow-minded.

[trojandave]

The real discrepancy in enrollment is in D1, where Chillicothe is D1 with 381 boys, and there are D1 schools such as Fairfield and St.Xavier which have over 1,100. If the OHSAA were to make any changes and add a division, it should be to split up D1. They did this in football, adding a 7th division. The D1 division in football didn't have the same number of schools as in the other divisions, but at least the enrollment discrepancies weren't nearly as large.

As far as public vs. private, with open enrollment, transfers, etc., I think that it will never be a perfect system. Over recent time, attempts have been made by the OHSAA to somewhat level the playing field. But it is very difficult to come up with a plan which is waterproof......and no matter what the plan, there's always going to be a group that will cry foul.

When I go to the state tournament, I just want to see good basketball, no matter who's playing.

[rockbiter]

Go back to class A and class B. Then, a state championship would MEAN something.

[The Flying Dutchman]

UKPROF,I assumed they would be separate for all sports but you are the prof.

[trojandave]

Stumblebum: A state championship today still means a great accomplishment. With 200 schools in each of the 4 divisions, just being in the Final 4 out of 200 is something to be very proud of. Having only 2 classes (which will never happen) would mean that many schools would never get to experience a state tournament. Yes, there are teams that make the state in the present time that don't have the look of a state caliber team, but for their fans, players, and coaches, it could mean a once in a lifetime experience.

I used to be of the mindset of fewer divisions, but I have changed since I graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1975. Portsmouth won the state title in 1931 and 1961 with only 2 classes, in 1978 with 3 classes, and in 1988 with 4 divisions. I never thought that the 1978 and 1988 championships were any less than the 1931 and 1961 titles. A state championship out of 269 schools (1978) or 200 schools (1988) is still a very worthy state championship.

[SPAMONY]

the reason public schools compete better in basketball vs football is it only takes 5-7 players vs 20-25 in football simple math really.

[ONE OF A KIND]

UKPROF, I guess you have never been to a Moeller vs Elder football playoff game. You all are right though something needs to be done, Ironton St. Joe and Portsmouth Notre Dame and many more schools like them are running out of room in their trophy cases with all the Championship trophies

They don't have many championship trophies to make room for, nor do the public schools in the small area they draw students from. However, private school teams in the smaller divisions that can draw from cities like Columbus have many trophies to make room for.

[The Flying Dutchman]

Groundbuck, Very true but people want to punish all Private schools which in the end affects ISJ and PND and a bunch of other schools who have done no wrong.

[rockbiter]

Stumblebum: A state championship today still means a great accomplishment. With 200 schools in each of the 4 divisions, just being in the Final 4 out of 200 is something to be very proud of. Having only 2 classes (which will never happen) would mean that many schools would never get to experience a state tournament.

I played for a class B school back in the dark ages. Ohio had more than 1000 class B schools at that time. When you proved yourselves the best of (more than) 1000, it was a memorable accomplishment.

[C-Bolt]

I liked it better when it was AAA,AA,A for all sports.I could even live with 4 Divisions's in football, but it's watered down enough now and will get worse as time goes on trying to please everyone and making more money,just give em all a trophy! Some states pretty much do that now.

[G.W.A.]

Why would they cry???? They just won 25% of the titles with only 18% of the schools.

I can only begin to imagine a 10 or 20 year count on the percentage privates have won.

[Swampfox]

The one advantage for private schools is they can control their admission. This means that they can keep their numbers down and stay in a lower division. Public schools have to take anyone in their zone. Thank God for public schools, they take kids that otherwise wouldn't have a prayer of getting into a private school.

[anderson2012]

The one advantage for private schools is they can control their admission. This means that they can keep their numbers down and stay in a lower division. Public schools have to take anyone in their zone. Thank God for public schools, they take kids that otherwise wouldn't have a prayer of getting into a private school.

There is no incentive for private schools to deny those that pay tuition.

[4thgoal]

The one advantage for private schools is they can control their admission. This means that they can keep their numbers down and stay in a lower division. Public schools have to take anyone in their zone. Thank God for public schools, they take kids that otherwise wouldn't have a prayer of getting into a private school.

There is no incentive for private schools to deny those that pay tuition.

There are cost break points for the profit/loss of private schools based on the student/teacher ratio and the amount of classrooms, computers, etc. Many private schools proudly have a high teacher/student ratio which translates to higher academic standards. If they allow more students willing to pay tuition in, they have to hire more teachers and buy more computers or even build a larger school. Oh....some of them even care about athletics and being able to be competitive, so having a lower budget and less classrooms allows them to stay in the black and also compete in lower divisions. That most likely wasn't a consideration when their facilities were built, but it is a limiting factor now that they use to their advantage.

I would love to see the stats on the % of kids accepted at Notre Dame and St Joe compared to for example Bishop Hartley and Bishop Ready. How many kids do SJ or ND turn away? I would guess very, very few.

[anderson2012]

The one advantage for private schools is they can control their admission. This means that they can keep their numbers down and stay in a lower division. Public schools have to take anyone in their zone. Thank God for public schools, they take kids that otherwise wouldn't have a prayer of getting into a private school.

There is no incentive for private schools to deny those that pay tuition.

There are cost break points for the profit/loss of private schools based on the student/teacher ratio and the amount of classrooms, computers, etc. Many private schools proudly have a high teacher/student ratio which translates to higher academic standards. If they allow more students willing to pay tuition in, they have to hire more teachers and buy more computers or even build a larger school. Oh....some of them even care about athletics and being able to be competitive, so having a lower budget and less classrooms allows them to stay in the black and also compete in lower divisions. That most likely wasn't a consideration when their facilities were built, but it is a limiting factor now that they use to their advantage.

I would love to see the stats on the % of kids accepted at Notre Dame and St Joe compared to for example Bishop Hartley and Bishop Ready. How many kids do SJ or ND turn away? I would guess very, very few.

Classrooms and computers are fixed costs for the vast majority of private schools - you have them if you have 200 kids or 100 kids. There are quite a few private schools that receive grants to pay for the "new" computers, some of them receive enough money to pay for it completely while some others charge the "one time only" technology fee. While you're not wrong that there is a break-even point with private schools, I'm not sure how classrooms are a factor. Student/teacher ratio may be the case at some of the more middle-to-higher sized schools, but your non-urban private schools will generally have a few teachers that have certifications in a few different subjects, so you may have an English teacher that also is certified to teach Gov't and as well as Histories. It ends up working well.

The only case I can really see many private schools having to hire more teachers is in the arts and, for Catholic schools, theology because the arts has a credit requirement for graduation yet can be the best field of electives to utilize more hires because there's evidently less demand (and consequently, less supply) for home economics/home eq and courses of a similar nature. Theology teachers are probably the most expendable, I don't think that's a bad thing. But I'm not convinced that's a reason to control enrollment simply because if a Catholic school wanted to, they could employ if they really wanted to an "adjunct labor" way of using a seminarian, deacon, or even a priest/chaplain to teach the religion classes.

The only schools that are able to ensure a stability in the black are the ones that essentially operate as a monopoly: they are the only producer of a product in a market that has demand yet has barriers to entry. Bishop Hartley definitely serves a monopoly in their case for the east side of Columbus proper, in particular girls. They are the only co-educational high school that serves the populace south of I-670, east of U.S. 23 in Franklin County that is able to offer the "full package" for families in terms of strong programs in the academics, arts, and athletics. The fact they're the only Catholic co-ed HS to serve that area is a different monopoly, but that type of monopoly is something most Catholic schools utilize but doesn't prove to be advantageous (see: Zanesville Rosecrans and I'm assuming Portsmouth Notre Dame, but more on ND in a bit). I don't think Ready would necessarily utilize "keep numbers low to be advantageous in sports" because they're on the middle-to-lower end of Division VI-football/Division III-non football and this year their boys basketball team a complete 180 for the worse record wise on the heels of them making the Final Four the season before.

Going to your example of Notre Dame, I don't doubt for a second P.N.D. is less willing to pass on kids because a) it's essential for the school's survival to take anyone that can pay even half and b) Notre Dame's programs I theorize do not present themselves to be any more competitive or iconic of "the full package" than those of Valley and especially 'Burg, so there's not as much certainty when the next family looking to enroll their son/daughter into PND will be compared to a family looking to send their son or daughter to Bishop Hartley.

I do have to disagree with your statement on facilities just because it's proven to be hard on some schools (such as Watterson) to showcase their school facilities that were built in the '50s when going up against the newly built schools in the "McMansion" areas of Columbus and northern Franklin/southern Delaware County. A testament to that would be that Watterson was D2 for the 2005 football season, and in 2014 they were D4.