No longer will Missouri high schools have to wait to see an enrollment spike or drop take effect. Beginning this year, the Missouri State High School Activities Association will release new class and district assignments annually.
The goal is to make sure schools of similar size are competing against one another, accounting for sudden, drastic shifts in student enrollment.
In the past, MSHSAA would roll out new class and district assignments every two years, but last year, the member schools voted to make that an annual process.
"I think the biggest reason for making these changes were to have the most accurate numbers possible and to be able to manage those classifications on where schools fall, and when a school does have a large class -- a Class 1 school that only has 130 students in their school has a family of six move in -- that's a large difference," MSHSAA communications director Jason West said. "A larger school like a [Cape Girardeau Central], six students doesn't have as big of a difference as it does at a Kelly or a school like that. Trying to have those as accurate as possible is what the membership was looking for."
This new process was made possible by a change in how MSHSAA collects student enrollment data. In the past, MSHSAA got the enrollment numbers for many schools, especially public schools, through the state department. Schools would submit enrollment data for state funding and MSHSAA would realign classes and districts based on that information.
Now, all schools -- public and private -- will upload a file to the MSHSAA website that contains all the relevant numbers, according to West.
"When you break it down a lot of schools will be in same class as they have been unless there's just a large shift in enrollment," West said. "It will be looked at every year instead of every two years."
Another change: MSHSAA will base its classifications off enrollment for grades 9-11, excluding the senior class. In the past, MSHSAA factored in all students attending the high school, from grades 9-12.
One consequence of this new bylaw: the new classifications for each sport won't be released until "the week prior to first allowable contact," in football's case Friday since the season begins Aug. 24. So for winter and spring sports, those new class and district alignments won't be available until later in the school year.
The last time MSHSAA released new classifications -- for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years -- football and basketball classifications were released together, and the new assignments came out in the spring, months before the new school year began.
"I don't really see any issues with that as far as that goes," West said. "Football schedules have already been made. Who's in that district doesn't really matter. You're able to play who you want to play, just like in any other sport. Not knowing who's in the district or where the district's going to be played at the start of the season, I don't see a lot of push back there."
"Where there may be some negative feedback would be if a team has traditionally gone to one or two district sites for their tournament and now has to go to a new venue because they're in a different district than they may have traditionally been involved with. That may cause some concern for some schools."
The member schools decided that uncertainty was worth it to ensure schools wouldn't suffer, or benefit, from overnight changes in enrollment.
The new system will be unveiled this upcoming Friday, with fall sports teams learning their class and district assignment.
"One of the other reasons for going every year instead of every two years is with the changing of enrollment," West said, "making sure those are as accurate as possible so schools are trying to participate against other schools that are more like them and being able to manage the classifications as best as possible."