Catholic, private schools want to govern themselves

The lull following the LHSAA’s decision to retain separate football playoffs is over. Catholic and private school principals have spoken loudly and clearly.

They want to control their collective destinies, hopefully within the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s structure.

Having met quietly over the past several weeks, these minority members of the state’s athletic association anticipate that separate playoffs are about to proliferate to other major sports. They have taken a proactive stance by drawing up a plan, outlined by principals from six Baton Rouge-area private and Catholic schools, that would create separate legislative branches within the umbrella of the LHSAA – a public side and a private side.

The organizational chart of this working model would include an elected LHSAA executive board made up of six representatives from the private sector and an equal number from public schools. This board would have governance over the LHSAA constitution and the core values on which its members could agree. Each branch would have an elected legislative board with governance over by-laws specific to their members.

Under this plan, which would end the 24-member executive committee, rules would be made specific to public or non-public schools and made only by representatives of those types of schools. Non-football schools would no longer vote for football-related issues.

The Catholic and private school principals believe “this idea has merit and would be the answer to frustrations for both public and private schools.”

The plan now has the attention of the LHSAA and its executive director, Kenny Henderson, who invited the authors and a group of principals to express their concerns and ideas to the executive committee late last week.

The authors feel their plan would effectively:

➤ Create enough separation to satisfy public school principals who want separate playoffs.

➤ Enable the private school body to determine its playoff system and other measures specific to private schools. The model cites financial aid as an example.

➤ Enable the private school branch to maintain the LHSAA structure, which includes contracts, sponsors, building, personnel, officials associations, the Hall of Fame, in which they have a vested interest.

➤ Provide for private schools to continue to play public schools if they wish. That would help private schools located in remote areas with travel and maintain traditional rivalries.

➤ Possibly build conferences within the private schools, or schools could elect to play independent schedules. Principals of these schools would then decide how they define their schedules and playoff system.

Catholic and private school principals are not yet prepared to desert the LHSAA, which granted them membership into the one-time public school association in 1929. But they have said they are not going to continue to yield to the whims of the majority of public school principals under the disguise of creating a “level playing field.”

There are 93 non-public schools that would come under this umbrella; 48 are Catholic schools; 62 have football programs (34 of those are Catholic schools). There are 29 schools that do not have a football program. Fifteen of these are all-girls schools.

Questions abound
While Henderson and the executive committee are eager to close this philosophical divide, the private school model creates many questions:

➤ Will the majority of principals allow the other side to take the voting power out of their hands?

➤ Will the LHSAA executive committee agree to a different structure?

➤ What is the time frame for implementation, if passed?

➤ Will the same compliance system be maintained?

➤ How will the finance committee be chosen?

➤ How many classes will be created on each side?

➤ What is the future of classes B and C?

I seriously doubt the plan, as it is written, will be forwarded for a vote, although the LHSAA has a fervent desire to bridge this rift. In that case, the model offers a future glimpse: “If in the end this does not resolve the spoken conflicts and establish private schools as valued members of the LHSAA, we would have the framework to consider another association.”