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About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (March 21, 2018)
Appeal Tribune ❚ WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2018 ❚ 1B Sports HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS After another appeal Cascade, for the second time, will appeal the OSAA's decision that the high school should be in Class 5A starting in the 2018-2019 school year. MOLLY J. SMITH/STATESMAN JOURNAL Cascade plans to petition new OSAA decision Bill Poehler Salem Statesman Journal USA TODAY NETWORK The Executive Board of the Ore- gon School Activities Association, for the second time, has decided that Cascade High School should be in Class 5A starting in the 2018- 2019 school year. And Cascade, for the second time, will appeal the OSAA's deci- sion and request to remain in its current Class 4A. Since the opinion of Hearing's Officer W. Michael Gillette was handed down Feb. 27, following Cascade's first appeal, the OSAA’s Executive Board held three confer- ence calls over the past two weeks and voted 7-4 to deny Cascade’s re- quest. Cascade superintendent Darin Drill said he has talked to the Cas- cade School Board's members and plans to appeal the Executive Board’s decision within the next few days. “Obviously all of this is new ter- ritory for all of us,” Drill said. “It’s not my goal to cause them all kinds of issues here. It’s how do I explain to students, 'Yeah, you’re under the (enrollment) number, but you’re not in 4A?'” The OSAA’s decision centers around how the group considers an emergency placement in a lower classification. In October, the Executive Board placed Cascade in a 5A league with Central, Corvallis, Crescent Valley, Dallas, Lebanon, North Salem, Sil- verton, South Albany and West Al- bany. Cascade moved some students into a separate charter school be- fore the 2017-2018 school year, dropping the main school’s adjust- ed enrollment to 643 from its 2016- 2017 number of 687. The 5A classification threshold is 665. Tuesday’s decision says that ex- ecutive board’s emergency place- ment for dropping a school typical- ly happens when a school’s adjust- ed enrollment declines by 7 to 10 percent under the classification threshold; Cascade’s adjusted en- rollment is 3.3 percent under the 5A cutoff. “If I’m a 6A school and I’m one kid under the number, is that an emergency placement?” OSAA Ex- ecutive Director Peter Weber said. Drill said it is not spelled out in the OSAA’s handbook what per- centage of students above or below the cutoff number should be used for an emergency classification de- cision by the Executive Board. “We just don’t believe that this makes a lot of common sense,” Drill said. Cascade initially appealed the OSAA’s reclassification in Novem- ber, and its appeal was heard Feb. 14 by Gillette. Gillette ruled that the Executive Board erred in not considering al- lowing Cascade to remain in 4A and sent the case back to the Exec- utive Board to reconsider its deci- sion. The board ruled Tuesday that Cascade didn't have a large enough enrollment drop to justify being placed in a lower classification to start the next four-year time block. “I think one of the concerns is that if we’re looking at '17-18 data for Cascade, then wouldn’t you have to look at '17-18 data for every- body, and at what point would you have to cut that off?” Weber said. In Gillette’s opinion, he stated that he would make himself avail- able to help bring the case to con- clusion. Weber said he would reach out to Gillette once the Cascade appeal has been filed. bpoehler@StatesmanJour- nal.com or Twitter.com/bpoehler HIGH SCHOOL DANCE Silverton struts their stuff at championships Silverton High School students perform during the OSAA Dance and Drill State Championships at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Ore., on March 17. PHOTOS BY ALEX MILAN TRACY