The Macon County Board of Education took no action on Macon Early College athletic participation at its monthly board meeting on April 22, at Mountain View Intermediate, but said it could next month.
MCS Chief Academic Officer/Federal Programs Director Mickey Noe said there wasn’t much of an update about the NCHSAA realignment, which drives the discussion about MEC sports.
Since MEC students have been allowed to play sports at Franklin High School, all roughly 130 students count toward the high school’s average daily membership (ADM). The ADM for the first 20 days of the 2024-25 school year is the sole factor in NCHSAA’s athletic conference realignment for the following four years. With that bump in the number of countable students plus the NCHSAA going from four to eight classifications starting in 2025-26, FHS might be in a conference with schools east of Asheville, a 2-3-hour bus trip one way.
In response, the school board has mulled shutting the door on MEC students competing for Franklin High School athletics to keep the ADM down and stay in a more geographically friendly conference.
Noe said he and MEC Principal Caleb Parham are discussing multiple options, including talking to neighboring counties, reaching out to WNC officials on the NCHSAA state board, and exploring Macon Early College developing its own athletic teams. Board Attorney John Henning said at the risk of sounding cryptic, he’s developing contacts to help shape an outcome they would like to see but stressed patience.
The NCHSAA has not released or stated any timeline or indication about how realignment will go. The realignment process typically doesn’t start until after the state gets ADM data in the fall when it goes through a multi-step process with drafts and re-drafts. Noe said they will have clarity from NCHSAA after its April 30 to May 2 board meetings.
Two MEC parents submitted public comments by email against barring MEC students from playing sports. The first was from Adrian W. Holt, a parent of two students, one at MEC and one at FHS, who said barring MEC students from FHS athletics after deciding to attend MEC with the guarantee of athletic participation would amount to discrimination. Holt also said the NCHSAA has implemented split conferences to avoid longer travel in other areas.
The second letter, from Jennifer Pope, another MEC parent, said barring students from athletics would be an “injustice” and asked that current MEC students be grandfathered in for FHS athletics.
This follows several emotional pleas from MEC parents and students at last month’s board meeting once word of the potential MEC athletics ban, first brought up in a February budget work session, got around.
Construction project updates
The school board approved opening bids for the Macon Middle School track on May 7 at 2 p.m. MCS Grounds and Facilities Director Todd Gibbs said they have specs from LS3P for the work, including replacing the base for the track and the gravel below it. Gibbs said LS3P hopes to finish this project by the fall, at the latest, so the track teams have a facility when renovations at the Franklin High School stadium start at the end of October/first of November for over a year.
Board member Diedre Breeden brought up maybe doing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the county commissioners for the Nantahala wastewater project. Henning said an MOU is something he’s been meaning to do for all ongoing capital projects. Board Chair Jim Breedlove said Gibbs spent a lot of time on the Nantahala wastewater project only for the commissioners to dismiss all that work, so MOUs would be good to get everyone on the same page.
According to Breeden’s liaison report, Carroll Daniel, the Construction Manager At Risk for the FHS project, and LS3P, the project architects, wants to dig under the lower FHS parking lot, where students park, to reroute some power and septic lines around the football field. Breeden said the contractors want to get this work done over the summer so the parking will be available for students starting in late August. This would be the first piece of construction as part of building a new Franklin High and stadium.
“That’s exciting that there will be movement that occurs, potentially in the next month,” Breeden said.
Board member Hilary Wilkes said Vannoy Construction, the CM At Risk for the Highlands School renovation, currently has a guaranteed maximum price in the $5.5 and $5.8 million range. Both Highlands School and FHS are CM At-Risk projects, requiring those companies to finalize a guaranteed maximum price before wholesale work starts. The county hopes to have those prices in the coming months to get funding plan approval from the state.
Personnel report
According to the personnel report approved after a closed session, two administrators will have their interim tags removed. Crystal Parker will be the permanent East Franklin Elementary School principal and Dan Gibson will be the permanent FHS assistant principal, both effective July 1.
The next Board of Education meeting will be Monday, May 20, at Nantahala School.