South Dakota has recently implemented a new way of counting students for the purposes of classification of schools in the South Dakota High School Activities Association—the governing body for interscholastic activities among member schools in South Dakota. This means of counting students was approved as a constitutional amendment to the SDHSAA by a 65% favorable vote in 2022. The proposed amendment was actually submitted by the SDHSAA Native American Advisory Council and SDHSAA Staff. Here is the rationale given for the proposed amendment:
We have a number of schools on the line between classifications with large populations of students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch. In general, those schools and students have severe discrepancies in access to equipment and school/personal access to outside training opportunities as compared to similar sized schools with low populations of students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch.
That seems reasonable and is no doubt true. After all, schools with a large percentage of students who qualify for Free and Reduced lunch necessarily have a large percentage of students from families with low income—maybe even below the poverty line—and it logically follows that those students do not generally live in areas of high property value. What is absurd is the proposed remedy. The amendment, once approved, actually puts this into Article III, Section 2 of the SDHSAA Constitution:
In addition to actual figures collected by the South Dakota Department of Education, a Free and Reduced Lunch Multiplier shall be utilized to adjust enrollment counts dependent upon the reported percentage of students in grades 9-12 at each school who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch according to the South Dakota Department of Education per Federal guidelines. The free and reduced lunch percentage shall be multiplied by 30%, and the resulting percentage will be used to reduce the enrollment count of the school, with a maximum multiplier reduction of 30%. The resulting enrollment count with multiplier shall be used as the official enrollment number of the school when determining classifications.
Before you go back and read that again, thinking that you surely got something wrong, let me put you at ease. You didn’t. That’s right—you read it correctly. The proposal—which passed with a 65% “yes” vote—says that students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch will not be counted as whole students for the purposes of classification.
If you are a student of U.S. History, or at least remember your History classes from school, you will likely remember another time when people were not counted as whole persons. When the Constitution was written and adopted—the United States Constitution, not the SDHSAA constitution—enslaved individuals were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining representation in the House of Representatives.
The SDHSAA now creates a multiplier by taking the percentage of students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch and multiplying it by 0.30 (or 30%). So, for the purposes of illustration, suppose there was a school with 300 students in grades 9-12. Of those students, let’s suppose that 70% of them qualified for the Free and Reduced Lunch program, That would mean that 70 would be multiplied by 0.30, which would result in a multiplier of 21%. That would then be multiplied by the total enrollment of 300, yielding the number 63. That number would be subtracted from the total enrollment and, in this case, the difference would be 237. Now that school’s enrollment is counted as 237 students rather than 300. Suddenly, sixty-three students at that school do not count at all. It is as if they do not exist.
This is an absurdity. It is ridiculous. Who in their right mind thinks that this should be acceptable? I mean who besides the majority of 65% of the school boards in South Dakota. Oh, and the school boards in North Dakota and Minnesota too, which have similar policies in place and actually use even higher multipliers than South Dakota does.
Please understand that I am not suggesting that the wealth of the area a school is in has no impact on its athletic teams or fine arts productions. I am sure that it does. The quality of their athletic or fine arts facilities, the budget for their programs, the quality of their equipment, the salary or stipend (if any) for the coaches—all of those things, and more, will be impacted by the wealth of the area from which the school draws its students. But classification of schools is not based on the wealth of the school or the school district. Not in South Dakota nor, to my knowledge, anywhere else. It is based purely on the number of students in the school. In South Dakota it is called Average Daily Membership. The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) is, per its website, “the national leader and advocate for high school athletics as well as fine and performing arts programs.” Its website includes a link to a PowerPoint from the South Carolina High School League entitled “Methods of Classification for State Association Tournaments.” What are the methods included? Um, just one. “Schools are ranked by enrollment size grades 9 through 12.” Just for fun, and to look coast to coast, Oregon also uses ADM and Delaware uses “a DOE certified enrollment count for grades 9 through 12.” Maybe it’s different in the South? Nope. In Alabama, “Classification is based on Average Daily Membership (ADM) figures furnished by the State Department of Education.”
I certainly hope that no one is suggesting the children from financially-challenged circumstances cannot be good athletes. There are far too many examples otherwise for anyone to argue that. Those in favor of these adjusted counts based on Free and Reduced Lunch, then, must be arguing that overall financial resources of a school’s enrollment can impact level of play. If someone wants to argue that—and I think they could make a strong case—then let them. And if classification are going to be determined that way, then let them. But do it honestly, not by pretending that certain students do not exist.
THINKING OUT LOUD 