The issues caused by the glut of public schools in Hamilton County are compounded by the overabundance of private school options.
With eight secondary private schools, Chattanooga has just two fewer than Knox and Shelby counties combined -- despite having close to 500,000 fewer residents than the combined population for Knox and Shelby.
Local private school administrators admit athletics is a useful tool in competing for students.
"Athletics are like the nice front porch to bring people into our house," said one private school athletic director. "Let's be honest. When we advertise our school, a lot of those showcase our athletic facilities and team accomplishments, because we know those are things that will catch a parent's eye."
Shortly after college, Brian Hughes and his wife settled in Chattanooga and began their family. Their two children attended Ooltewah Elementary School until recently, when the couple began to research private schools. After touring several others, they chose Silverdale Baptist Academy, where their son is in the sixth grade and their daughter is in the second grade.
"We wanted our kids to have a Christian education, but both of them are also involved in sports, so athletics was a big part of what we were looking for, too," Hughes said. "My son plays basketball, football and golf, and my daughter also golfs, so we wanted them to be somewhere that they would have the resources to best develop their talents."
The entire Grace Academy campus was leveled by a tornado in 2020. Once the school began the rebuilding process, athletic director Bob Ateca said having the athletic facilities completed first was a priority.
"The athletic facilities will be in place before any of the academic buildings are completed," said Ateca, who noted the school's fields for baseball, football/soccer and softball will all have artificial turf. "Parents shop high schools the same as they would for college now, so you have to have nice facilities or they'll take their kids somewhere else that has what they're looking for.
"I taught in public school for 15 years and have been around private schools for a while, too, and I've learned that athletics is just as much of a driving force in how a family chooses a school as the classroom."
The only public high schools built in the county since Soddy-Daisy's new building opened in 1983 have been Signal Mountain (2008) and East Hamilton (2009). For the rest, the condition of athletic facilities has steadily declined, even to the point that it was cited by former TSSAA executive director Bernard Childress, who retired in July, as a major factor in why the city likely would not regain the rights to host the Spring Fling state championships event.
The competition to bring in as much local athletic talent as possible has created an arms race as private schools try to top one another by adding new facilities, the cost of which reaches into the millions.
"What the private schools can do is working for them and bleeding a lot of us public schools dry of our best talent," said J.T. Nelson, who coaches baseball, basketball and football at Hixson Middle School. "Just recently one of my best athletes messaged to tell me he won't be coming back because he's going to Chattanooga Christian.
"I understand the private schools are just doing what's in their best interest, and they give kids a chance at a great education, but it's frustrating when you pour so much time into developing a kid and then you lose them because some other place has nicer facilities."
Having nearly 30 high schools — public and private combined — in Hamilton County has not only stretched school budgets thin, it has also diluted the local athletic talent pool to the point that the majority of both public and private schools struggle to compete athletically on the state level.
"You want to compete for state championships every season, but I just don't know how realistic that is right now," admitted Silverdale Baptist football coach Mike Connor, whose team won nine games last season but was soundly beaten 56-7 in the second round by eventual state champion Lipscomb Academy of Nashville.
Hamilton County public schools are currently in their longest championship drought in football and basketball — Tennessee's revenue-producing sports — since the TSSAA began its three-classification system in 1976.
That lack of on-field success has also spilled over into the mid-sized private school league, where since the TSSAA began grouping all private schools into Division II in 2017, only Notre Dame has advanced past the second round of the football playoffs. The Fighting Irish, Boyd Buchanan, Chattanooga Christian and Silverdale Baptist have all failed to contend in the basketball state tournament as well.
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHargis.