The Georgia High School Association is planning to develop criteria that would allow schools that struggle in sports to move down in classification.
The decision came out of Wednesday morning’s meeting of the GHSA’s reclassification committee, which didn’t discuss the criteria but tasked the GHSA office with the job.
“To be clear, we have heard appeals in previous cycles from schools who argued they needed to be in a lower classification due to sports performance,” GHSA president Jim Finch said. “Some of those appeals were granted and others denied.
“What the committee is trying to accomplish during this cycle is an established criteria on the merits of these particular appeals, instead of using opinions or assumptions, which may have occurred some in the past.”
There’s reason to believe future appeals, using an express criteria, will lead to more successful appeals, though Finch didn’t speculate on that. Winning appeals to play down based on performance is not common.
This might be called a moral victory for those who advocated earlier this year for a competitive-balance reclassification model, which classifies schools based on performance rather than enrollment.
It had significant but minority support and the reclass committee rejected it, but the model succeeded in shedding light on schools that rarely advance in or even make the playoffs.
The competitive-balance model would’ve moved up or down the five highest and five lowest sports performers in each class. It used a rating system based primarily on state-playoff success.
“Some of the conversation today was to potentially use a competitive-balance approach to hear those appeals,” Finch said.
The reclass committee will meet again Oct. 5. The GHSA’s executive committee, which is the ultimate authority, will convene the following day. The executive committee must approve all reclassification decisions for the 2026-28 cycle.
In previous meetings this year, the reclass committee endorsed keeping the current model of seven classes, with the Class 3A-A Private playoff division for smaller private schools. Starting in 2026-27, the highest class, currently 6A, will be called 7A while Class A’s divisions I and II will become Class 2A and Class A, respectively.
The reclass committee agreed Wednesday to place 15% of the GHSA’s more than 460 members in each class except 7A (12%) and 6A (13%).
The biggest reclass committee change, if approved Oct. 6, would be using a points rating system to select and seed all 32 playoff teams in each class in most sports while giving automatic playoff berths only to region champions.
Historically, playoff berths were awarded to region winners and runners-up; in the proposed system, the playoff teams without automatic berths would be determined by points, regardless of region.
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