Breaking down PIAA proposals for football reclassification

The PIAA strategic planning and football steering committees cut down eight proposals to three last week when they met in Mechanicsburg.

Each of the three remaining proposals on how to classify high school football programs in Pennsylvania comes with a secondary possibility of including a 10-percent rule that counts only 10 percent of non-traditional students against a school's enrollment. Those students include charter, alternative school and home-schooled students that normally have been counted toward their base high school's enrollment.

For example, if a school has 100 boys attending a charter school, only 10 will count under the 10-percent rule. The PIAA Board of Directors passed a second reading of the 10-percent rule July 22, so it only needs to pass one more reading in October. However, the football classifications need to pass two more times and must be passed by the board's December meeting, executive director Dr. Robert Lombardi said.

The football steering and strategic planning committees will meet again Sept. 16 to go over the remaining proposals.

Below are links to breakdowns of how District 3 football teams could be slotted under proposed alignments.

• Four classifications

• Six classifications

• Six classifications with 6A reserved only for enrollments of 700 or more boys

It's also important to note the PIAA is considering options to cut the length of the football season, from August practice to the state championships, by a week. To do so, those possibilities include:

• One scrimmage, 10-week regular season, six-week postseason

• Two scrimmages, nine-week regular season, six-week postseason

• Two scrimmages, 10-week regular season, five-week postseason

The PIAA previously addressed classification expansion in 2009 but did not pass it during the final stage by the required two-thirds majority vote. This time around, District 9 football chairman Bob Tonkin proposed in January an increase in the number of classifications.

For a proposal to be officially adopted, the PIAA must pass three readings. It passed eight proposals in the spring during its first reading. When the strategic planning and football steering committees met last week, they trimmed those eight proposals down to three for the PIAA Board of Directors to consider the following day.

Confusion from two or three board members curtailed passing a second reading of the three remaining proposals, but Lombardi stressed, "There's time. They at least now have a road map."

The board has meetings scheduled for October and December, where the remaining proposals can be passed or scrapped.

Contact Matt Goul at 771-2045.