Junction City High School's appeal to move down to Class 2A from Class 3A was approved Tuesday, the first day of the Arkansas Activities Association's Summer Workshop at the Holiday Inn Little Rock Airport Conference Center.
While Junction City will continue competing in Class 3A for the 2017-2018 academic year, the Dragons will move back to Class 2A in 2018-2019. Before moving to Class 3A in 2016, Junction City won three consecutive Class 2A state football championships in 2012-2014 and six overall.
For the 2018-2020 classification cycle, Junction City was listed with 628 students, a 209.33 average for grades 9-11 over a three-year period from the 2014-2015 to the 2016-2017 academic years. But the AAA and the Arkansas Department of Education gave Junction City 108 more students in the three-year average. Those 108 students were all from Louisiana and were counted twice in the classification cycle.
Junction City's adjusted three-year average is 173.33 (520 students from the 2014-2015 to 2016-2017 school years), making it the 15th-largest Class 2A school for the 2018-2020 cycle.
"We gave them too many students," AAA Executive Director Lance Taylor said to the association's board of directors. "Junction City caught it.
"We made a mistake. We have reconfigured their numbers correctly."
With Junction City headed to Class 2A, Yellville-Summit (189.67 students in the 2018-2020 cycle) will move back to Class 3A. Yellville-Summit was the largest Class 2A school in the next cycle, but will be the 44th-largest Class 3A school among 48 schools in the classification.
Junction City, located near the Arkansas-Louisiana border in Union County, is the only Arkansas city whose school district is allowed to receive Louisiana students, per state law. Students from nearby Claiborne and Lincoln parishes in Louisiana are allowed to enroll at Junction City
The state department of education is required to count the Louisiana students for its first-quarter report, due Oct. 1 of each year, for student/teacher ratios in the classrooms and National School Lunch Act funds.
Per the AAA, the classification of schools for sports in the senior high school division is based upon the Oct. 1 enrollment report to the state department of education in grades 9-11. The enrollment from public schools is taken from the school's report filed with the state department of education. Then a three-year average of the Oct. 1 enrollment is used to identify a school's classification.
In other business Tuesday, Jacksonville's appeal to move from Class 6A to Class 5A was denied. Jacksonville formed the Jacksonville North Pulaski school district for the 2016-2017 academic year, merging with North Pulaski High School, which is now closed. The Pulaski County school's listed three-year average in the 2018-2020 cycle is 912.33, which is the 15th-largest of 16 Class 6A schools.
The AAA board of directors also reviewed the spring survey from coaches and administrators. Seven of the nine items on the survey received at least 66 percent passage from coaches and administrators and proposals of those items will be heard today. One of the items concerns an appeal process and limited review of ejections in all sports.
The proposals will receive a do or do not pass recommendation for the Governing Body meeting July 31.
The workshop runs through Thursday.
Sports on 06/07/2017