All the NCHSAA sees is 3 things when it comes to charter schools:
1) Money, money, money.
2) The chance for schools to play somebody different. Even though some can argue how unfair it is to play against schools that can recruit.
3) Money, money, money. Greed and nothing more.
They don't see how it hurts the other areas around it.
The NCHSAA admin wanted to make changes several years ago when Bishop McGuiness, a Parochial, was dominating girls hoops. It would be simple to have a separate playoff for charters in non football sports. The charters complained and the NCHSAA was literally told by the state legislature that charters were no different than any other public school and should be treated the same.
What goes along with those schools "should be treated the same" is when the NCHSAA recommended to 1A schools to go to a four round playoffs during the last realignment and have their own championship weekend 1A schools mainly due to two complaints of the schools. Football coaches felt they were overlooked on championship weekend and the non football sports wanted football to be finished earlier. Girls sports were onboard as they felt it hurt them in basketball due to scheduling and attendance. The 1A football coaches said it was not fair to them to be treated differently than the other three classifications. I disagreed because there were less than 80 football playing 1A schools and we were seeing very inferior teams qualifying. Currently I believe 1A and 4A should be four rounds. Found it strange that the classification that brought subdivided playoffs and the pod system did not want to be treated differently. Their own words are now used by charters but I agree that the charter school issue is the most important item facing the NCHSAA.
Personally, I think 1A needs to be split up during the non football playoffs into a "traditional" and "non traditional" format. "Non traditional" should be charters, Parochial, non boundary or extended boundary magnets, and any boundary high school that allows students that do not live in the geographical district to play sports. Exception would be children of teachers and administrators working at the school and students that move from the district during junior year (all students should be allowed to finish their senior year at the school they have been attending). I am sure a lot of "traditional" schools would need to make changes to meet that residency guideline! How would Swain and Cherokee be viewed back in the day when students were bouncing back and forth? How "traditional" was that?
