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SALT LAKE CITY — The pressure is on for the state's board of trustees to find a realignment solution that will be acceptable to both urban and rural schools.
The Board of Trustees is currently grappling with the dilemma of how to realign Utah high schools using six classifications for football — all while keeping in mind the unique challenges faced by urban and rural students.
Deseret News reporter Amy Donaldson reported that rural schools often face higher travel times and smaller budgets. Urban schools deal with more frequent transfers and participation lags due to socio- economic pressures.
Read more:
Deseret News: High school realignment debate begins to boil
Each time the state's Board of Trustees attempts to realign the schools, they run into conflicting needs and ideas about what should be most important — school size or geography.The board will consider Thursday the parameters for the next alignment.
One issue being tackled is what to do about non-boundary schools — charter and private schools that do not have geographic boundaries — that could potentially recruit athletes statewide. The challenge comes when rural boundary schools face off against non- boundary schools, which is one reason a 6A system was proposed.
The idea of moving to a geographic classification system instead of a size-based one has had a mixed reception; some say it enhances competition, others, that it retracts from it.
Some say that, based on anecdotal evidence, students are safer when they compete against student bodies of similar size. Others are uncomfortable with making a decision without hard data, though, saying it is too big of a decision to make without evidence to support it.
For more information on the potential realignment changes, click here for Amy Donaldson's report in the Deseret News.
