Dominion District Schools' Populations

Midlo, that's a wide range for sure. Has it always been that different?

Your info got me interested to see what Hanover and Henrico school populations look like. Hanover stats according to the county website:

Atlee 1566
Hanover 1319
Lee-Davis 1552
P-Henry 1476

I didn't find as specific info on the Henrico website, but the range was less than 500 from the largest to the smallest (excluding Glen Allen since they don't have 12 graders yet).

For the non-football sports, ranges like these are big advantages for a number of schools. Probably makes a good case for a lot of the recent re-alignment discussions too even though that initiative seems to be driven for different reasons.

Does anyone know what the current population guidelines are from the VHSL for the different divisions?

quote:

Has it always been that different?

Well, not always.

Back when I went to Midlothian HS, it covered all of the territory now covered by JR, Midlo, and Monacan, and some of the current Clover Hill territory as well. Clover Hill was either A or AA back then and most of the territory it had in those days is now in the Cosby district. Manchester was several miles east of its current location and serving a very different demographic.

The only constant is change.

It does make me wonder, though, if someone will get the bright idea to expand Monacan's and/or Midlothian's territory to the north to pick up some of those now in the JR zone. I'll be sure to miss any meetings held on that idea for fear of ending up smack dab in the middle of a riot.

As for Cosby, that's just a result of that being the hottest growth area in the county, and it'll probably take the construction of yet another school to deal with that. Still years away from that I think.

quote:

Originally posted by Midlo Dad:
The Observer ran a chart listing the student populations of all Chesterfield County schools. Here are the numbers for the 7 Dominion District programs:

1. James River, 2037
2. Cosby, 2033
3. Manchester, 1893
4. L.C. Bird, 1803
5. Clover Hill, 1782
6. Midlothian, 1,403
7. Monacan, 1363

James River and Cosby have 45-50% more students than Midlothian and Monacan. While both JR and Cosby are also very well coached, it does make you wonder how much of the difference in the standings from year to year is more attributable to the simple fact that when you have more males to draw from, you're likely to be much deeper on the field, in your pitching and on your bench.

I'll also keep beating the drum (all by my lonesome) for moving Powhatan up to AAA and into the Dominion. I think Powhatan has more students than Midlothian or Monacan, and Powhatan is only going to grow unless the county suddenly starts planning a second high school.

I will say this about having larger student body populations ... The more oysters to pick from, the better the chances of finding those pearls!

VHSL enrollment figures as of Sept. 30, 2011

New proposed realignments for 2013/14 and 2014/15 2yr cycle

Not sure what the politics are in there. On the southside two new high schools have been built in the last 15 years. The politics of the bond issues was to cast a wide net over multiple districts to get votes from the people that would be moved into the new schools and to promise smaller classroom sizes in the existing schools.

The net result was that two of the older schools ended up with the smallest enrollments and have significantly under utilized facilities while the new schools are busting at the seems. There has been talk off and on about moving kids back to the old schools but it looks like a 3rd rail politically so it probably won't happen.

TCW, thanks for those links, they are very illuminating.

The first thing I would say is, the VHSL should require at least 1200 students as a condition of AAA status. There are 9 Central Region AAA schools that need to move to AA level and they could have their own AA district with ease. Thomas Jefferson, Armstrong, Wythe, Marshall, Walker, Huguenot, Hopewell, Colonial Heights and Petersburg.

That leaves 25 other current AAA schools in the region. Powhatan certainly fits in well as a 26th. I didn't realize it, but Louisa might belong in there, too -- maybe a bit further out but pretty convenient to a lot of the Central's northwestern schools.

They could easily form three AAA districts based on the ease of travel to away games, as follows:

Dominion District (based on 288 corridor): James River, Powhatan, Midlothian, Monacan, Manchester, Clover Hill, Cosby, L.C. Bird, plus either Thomas Dale or Meadowbrook.

Central/Capital District (based on access via I-95 and 295): Hanover, Atlee, Lee-Davis, Highland Springs, Varina, Prince George, Dinwiddie, Matoaca, and either Meadowbrook or Thomas Dale.

Colonial District (northwestern quadrant): Godwin, Hermitage, Tucker, Freeman, Glen Allen, Deep Run, Patrick Henry, Henrico, and maybe Louisa. (Note that Glen Allen has only 1100 student this year but will jump above 1400 in a year's time when they have a senior class for the first time.)

Of course, nothing that simple will ever happen because people will get emotional and all bent out of shape. The reality is that the entire student bodies cycle through every 4 years and thus, it won't be long before the old alignments are totally forgotten anyway. So, why not just wipe the board clean and build from scratch according to a set of standards that make sense?

quote:

Friday, December 9, 2011

News: VHSL Executive Committee Unanimously Votes to Explore Expanded Classifications for Next Redistricting Cycle; 4, 5 or 6 Classifications Suggested

(Dec. 9, 2011) - The Initial Alignment Plan released last week by the Virginia High School League may have to take a backseat as the VHSL Executive Committee unanimously has voted 26-0 to have the Redistricting and Reclassification Committee institute a plan that expands the current three classifications to four, five or six classifications for the next two-year cycle of 2013-14 and 2014-15.

According to a VHSL release: "By a 26-0 vote, the Executive Committee directed the Redistricting and Reclassification Committee (R&R) to institute a plan that has 4 or 5 or 6 classifications for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 cycle and present this to the Executive Committee at the February 22 meeting. Therefore, the R&R Committee will be charged with developing this revised classification system at its February 2 meeting. An Ad Hoc Classification Task Force has been developed to reflect the desires of the executive committee, develop guidelines, obtain relevant information and suggest considerations that can be presented to the R&R Committee prior to its February 2 meeting."

The bottom line may be that the plan released last week will see very little debate as a new plan is developed for the Feb. meeting.

Posted by Dan Sousa at 3:46 PM
Labels: Redistricting, VHSL

Cool, maybe we will start from a clean slate after all.

IMHO, would not surprise me to see 6 classifications as the majority is concerned about everyone having an opportunity to take part in state level competition.

Regardless of what system will be put into place, it will not be perfect as there will some type of travel himmo with some.

Benedictine has 275 males... and competes pretty well? Especially when you remove the 10 to 12 who go specifically for basketball.

There have been times when BHS had an outstanding 4 to 5 players on the same team.

Benedictine might be doing a little baseball recruiting as well, it's not just basketball. Take a look at one of their studs for this upcoming year, great kid, good player but on his 3rd school in 3 years

Benedictine does indeed do quite well, but I think you would agree that going after a few hundred highly motivated, almost universally athletic kids is a bit different from just taking whoever shows up from the homes in your territory. A large portion of the males at any public school couldn't care less about sports.

Even with that, historically (on the baseball field at least) Benedictine has played pretty much even with the public schools with 1500 or fewer students, not quite as well when playing the larger schools.

If 1500 students translates to roughly 700 males, I guess you could say that 275 Benedictine types will yield a team roughly equivalent to the team you get out of 700 males from your immediate area. Actually that sounds about right to me.

wahoo24-

If you are referring to the Deep Run transfer - I do not think there was any recruiting involved.

(6) classifications coming???

Dec. 19th minutes: http://www.vhsl.org/files/rr-a...es-2011-december.pdf

I am not refering to the DR transfer. this is a kid who reclassed last yr at another private school with the intention of finishing at benedictine

TCW, that proposal actually manages to make things much worse than they are now. Wow.

I'm all for grouping by populations, but if you make the classifications too narrow, the typical movement up and down in student populations over a relatively short period of time will mean either things will get out of whack in a hurry, or you'll be moving teams year by year.

If I read this correctly, it also suggests that we'll have something sort of like what now goes on in football, where you have districts (or in the future, "conferences" -- like it matters what you call them) comprised of schools from 2 or even 3 levels. I haven't cared for that in football and I can't say that I'm excited about that approach being extended to baseball, or to any other sport for that matter. It's confusing, it makes it harder to develop rivalries, and it leads to anomalous results when you have teams who finish lower in district advancing to playoffs while those who finish above them don't.

It's like the old saying, when someone says, "It couldn't get any worse," and the reply goes, "Oh yes, it can get MUCH worse." I guess now the VHSL is going to prove that to us.