Macon reaches high school sports decision

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Macon reaches high school sports decision

Macon County School Board. File photo

The Macon County School Board has voted to require students to play high school sports at the school where they are enrolled beginning in the 2025-26 school year, meaning Macon Early College and Bartram Academy students will no longer be eligible for athletics at Franklin High School.

“We have a large, large number of students at Franklin High School that this could possibly affect if the ADMs of Bartram and Macon Early College were counted with Franklin High School,” Auxiliary Services Director Todd Gibbs.

Earlier this year, the North Carolina High School Athletics Association announced it was considering expanding high school classification from four divisions to eight divisions. Currently, Franklin High School is a 3A school, placing it in the second highest division within North Carolina high school sports. Divisions are determined based on the average daily membership (ADM), basically a school’s enrollment.

The realignment to expanded classifications will not take effect until the 2025-26 school year, but data from the first 20 days of the 2024-25 school year will be used.

NCHSAA has not been able to provide information about the school population cutoffs for the new classifications.

Currently, students at Macon Early College and Bartram Academy are allowed to play sports at Franklin High School, with about 25 MEC students participating. Because of this, the entire student body of MEC counts in the Average Daily Membership of FS in the NCHSAA data that determines the school’s classification.

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Even though the exact populations for the classifications have not been released by NCHSAA, school system administration estimates that FHS would move up one or two classifications if MEC and or Bartram Academy students were included in the high school’s ADM.

This becomes a problem if students have to travel farther to compete in playoff games in order to compete with other schools within their new classification.

“Bottom line is, we’ll play schools around here during regular season, but then if we have that larger ADM number, we’ll go much farther and play schools with similar ADM counts for playoffs,” said Gibbs.

In order to avoid moving up in classifications, which could require students to travel great distances for playoff games, the school board decided Macon Early College and Bartram Academy students would not be able to play sports at Franklin High School beginning in the 2025-26 school year. However, MEC and Bartram students will be able to play sports at FHS for one last year in the coming school year.

NCHSAA said that students from the two schools could participate in FHS sports in the coming year, without their ADM numbers being counted into that of FHS for the 2025-26 school year, if the school board decided that those students would not be participating at FHS for the 2025-26 school year.

So while MEC and Bartram students are included in FHS athletics for the coming school year, the ADM count for the 2025-26 school year and its associated athletic classification will only pull from Franklin High School itself.

Macon County Early College and Bartram Academy will have until October to decide if they want to apply separately to be members of the NCHSAA and thereby offer high school athletic participation to students through their own school.

“There is nothing stopping those schools from creating their own sports or athletic teams and joining NCHSAA,” said board member Stephanie Hyder-Laseter.

Board member Melissa Evans noted that the school system will need to ensure students at Macon Early College and Bartram Academy have access to practice fields and other necessary resources if they choose to participate in high school athletics.

“We just need to know, though, if they decide to go that way and create their own teams that they have a field to play on or a court to play on,” Evans said.

Superintendent Josh Lynch said the school system would work to ensure that access.

While the school board had hoped to wait and be able to determine just how much would change if MEC and Bartram students were included in the Franklin High School ADM count, Gibbs recommended the board move forward with a decision.

“My recommendation is that you guys need to make a decision,” said Gibbs, “because of registration at both of those schools and so that kids and families can plan for the future with all of the information.”

The board approved the decision unanimously.

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