By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@thecitizennews.com

A ruling by the Georgia High School Association last week sent shock waves through private schools in Georgia.

Last Monday, the GHSA Executive Committee voted to restrict the areas from which high school students may transfer to a private school and still retain eligibility for extracurricular activities.

Landmark Christian School and Woodward Academy, both of which have significant numbers of Fayette County residents enrolled, are affected by the ruling.

The reason for the executive committee's decision was based upon perceived advantages that private schools have over public schools. This issue was brought forward by state Rep. Tom Murphy of Bremen, speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives.

Murphy addressed the state legislature several months ago with a problem. His daughter coaches the debate team at Bremen High School, which loses every year to a private school. The private school draws students from a larger surrounding area and therefore, as Murphy reckons, has an advantage over the smaller schools that are forced to compete in the same GHSA classification with them.

Before the GHSA handed down the ruling last week, transfer students from any county that had at least 10 percent enrollment in the private school qualified for eligibility for extracurricular activities. Now, students transferring to private schools are eligible only if they live in the county in which the school is situated. If they do not live in the same county, they would lose a year of eligibility and not be able to participate in extracurricular activities that year.

Students that are currently enrolled are not affected, but starting in the fall transfer students will lose a year of eligibility. This ruling does not affect only athletic or academic teams. A transfer student would not be allowed to be in the school play or on the yearbook committee. The schools in the area that would be affected are Landmark Christian School and Woodward Academy.

In a statement released to the press last week, Landmark officials state, “The school does not consider the GHSA ruling to be fair or reasonable. Families considering private school education are impacted by the distance from their home to the school rather than the county in which the school is located. There presently are situations in public schools where the GHSA allows students to cross school district or county lines to attend public schools either nearer to their homes or offering programs they desire. This situation is a double standard.”

The GHSA ruling did state that students could appeal to a committee, but the length of the process might be a deterrent. The Landmark statement continued to say that, “While this particular ruling probably does not affect a large number of students each year, it is still unfair to those students who move into a community and who wish to have the freedom to choose the private school closest to their home.”