PORT ANGELES — Classification numbers for the 2020-24 cycle were finalized by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association at a meeting in Renton on Sunday.
Changes for the North Olympic Peninsula’s nine high schools are relatively modest and were reported in a Dec. 26 Peninsula Daily News article.
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Forks and Chimacum are dropping from Class 1A to Class 2B, with the Spartans and Cowboys both finding a new home with the Pacific 2B League, joining schools such as Raymond, North Beach (Ocean Shores), South Bend and Ilwaco.
The Spartans appealed to play up at the 1A level in boys soccer and will remain in the Evergreen League 1A for that spring sport. In Class 2B, boys soccer is offered as a fall sport. It’s not clear if Chimacum will follow the same path for its boys soccer program and attempt to compete at a 1A level.
Port Townsend will remain a 1A school, but the Olympic League 1A Division will cease to exist with Chimacum heading south and the Redhawks and Klahowya moving to the Nisqually League.
The Olympic League 1A teams competed in the Nisqually for football only during the last classification cycle and many sports also played Nisqually competition in regular season contests, so these changes also are relatively minor.
The breakdown
Beginning with the 2020-24 classification cycle, schools have been assigned a classification based on pre-set enrollment thresholds as opposed to sorting schools into six evenly distributed classifications.
For the WIAA’s 2020-24 enrollment cycle, enrollment ranges and the number of schools in each classification are: 1,300 or more students in ninth through 11th grades for Class 4A (51), 900-1,299 for 3A (79), 450-899 for 2A (62), 225-449 for 1A (60), 105-224 for 2B (61) and 1-104 for 1B (85).
To adjust for the disparate number of schools across the classifications, the WIAA has adjusted the number of schools that will qualify for state tournaments based on the number of schools playing each sport.
If 84-plus schools offer boys and girls basketball, for example, there will be 24 state tournament entries, 69 to 83 would provide 20 state tournament entries, 50 to 68 (16), 37 to 49 (12), 20 to 36 (eight) and 19 or less combined with smallest classification above or below.
Lunch count impact
For the first time in WIAA history, free-and-reduced lunch counts were factored into the classification process as well. A school with a free and reduced lunch rate greater than the statewide average (47 percent) had its enrollment number reduced for each percent that they exceed the statewide average — except at the 1B and 2B classification level.
The maximum a school’s enrollment could be adjusted was capped at 40 percent. Both of those changes were passed by the WIAA Representative Assembly in January of 2019.
The figures listed for each school are the average enrollment of students in grades 9-11, as reported to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction for the months of January through May 2019 plus October, and November doubled (eight total counts).
November is counted twice since the September figure is omitted due to the amount of changes to the student population a school experiences during the first month of the new school year. Private schools report monthly enrollments directly to the WIAA.
While enrollment figures set the baseline for classification alignments, a school can affect its classification in several ways. A school can opt up in classification, appeal its classification, or petition down a classification in football only.
While any choice to opt-up will last the entirety of the four-year classification cycle, an appeal or petition down stands for two years, which is the next time schools will have the option to appeal classification.
In total, 46 schools chose to opt-up in classification while the WIAA District Directors and the WIAA Executive Board approved the classification appeals of 10 schools and accepted the petition of nine schools petitioning down in football only.
View the listings of schools in each classification here.
