CEDARTOWN, GA – Officials at the Polk School District say that an appeal for Cedartown High School to move from Class 5A to Class 4A, following the Georgia High School Association reclassification process was made in error.
According to Assistant Superintendent and County Athletics Director Barry Williams, the school population numbers for Cedartown High School would not have worked out for Cedartown to move down to the new 4A classification.
“The old 4A is now 5A, and that’s where Cedartown resides in their classification, the old 2A is now 3A, which is where Rockmart is. The numbers dictate where they fall within a classification. So we’re actually still, if it was still classified as 4A, would be in 4A.”
The GHSA reclassification committee, in its most recent cycle, elected to introduce Class 7A as the highest classification. Rather than separating its smallest classifications into two divisions, the committee opted to elevate the higher of the two divisions to Class 2A, thereby shifting all other higher classifications up by one. This decision resulted in Cedartown moving into Class 5A from 4A, and Rockmart transitioning from Class 2A to 3A.
According to Williams, Cedartown High School Principal Scott Wilson, who requested to appeal the school’s placement in 5A, was mistaken in the interpretation of the move.
“It was a miscommunication, and it was nothing malicious.” Williams told WGAA Radio.
Only two schools in Class 5A successfully appealed their reclassification to a lower class. Central-Macon, with a base school population of 962, was initially assigned to Class 5A because its out-of-district enrollment figures (216 students), when factored with the GHSA multiplier, resulted in an adjusted enrollment of 1,394. Douglass-Atlanta presented a comparable case, citing 59 out-of-district students.
The enrollment for Cedartown High School was recorded at 1,379 students, with an additional nine students from outside the district, resulting in a final count of 1,397.
“We didn’t really have an appeal,” said Williams. “There was nothing about travel that would affect us in the appeal. It was only the numbers situation and that was just a misunderstood situation.”
A representative from Cedartown did not appear for the appeals hearing at GHSA Headquarters in Thomaston on Monday morning, though the school was listed on the agenda as the final school to be heard in an 11:15 a.m. time slot.
Williams stated that despite the probability of the appeal being denied, the school should have had a representative present at the hearing.
Preliminary region alignments were released on Tuesday, placing Cedartown in Region 7-5A, along with Allatoona, Cartersville, Cass, Dalton, Villa Rica and Woodland, Cartersville.