Sequatchie County High School Principal Tommy LayneThe splintering began 15 years ago with a separate league for Tennessee private high schools that give financial aid. Then the TSSAA rules makers voted nine years ago to strap the private schools that had chosen to forgo giving financial aid so they could remain in the public school league by multiplying their enrollment by 1.8, thus forcing them to move up in classification to face tougher competition.
So what is the future of the public-private school relationship in the state? One shared belief by most coaches and administrators from both sides is that a complete split is on the horizon for Tennessee prep sports, eventually sending all private schools to Division II. The determining factor would be whether a school charges tuition.
“I think most of the smaller private schools in our area are doing things by the rules, and you feel for them when they have to play up in classification,” said Sequatchie County principal Tommy Layne, who represents the Chattanooga area on the TSSAA Board of Control. “But I represent a lot of schools and I vote how the majority tells me to vote.
“Right now we’ve got a lot more public schools pushing to have a complete separation and split all private schools into Division II.”
According to public school advocates, offering financial aid to student-athletes was at the heart of the original dispute in the mid-1990s. The year the split went into effect, 52 percent of TSSAA member schools supported a complete split of public-private schools. By 2002, five years later, that had risen to more than 70 percent.