Richmond Public Schools want a new district for their sports teams in hopes of leveling the playing field and ending years of losing records.
Members of the school board hope the city's five high schools — Armstrong, George Wythe, Huguenot, John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson — can leave their current districts and form a league of their own.
Currently, Armstrong competes in the Capital District, George Wythe and Huguenot in the Dominion and John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson in the Colonial. According to 2009 enrollment, which is used to determine this year's divisions, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and George Wythe are the three smallest schools, respectively, in the Central Region.
Armstrong comes in at fifth smallest and Huguenot is the seventh smallest.
Regularly competing against schools with enrollments two and three times larger, the city schools have struggled to win games, particularly in football. George Wythe snapped a 67-game losing streak earlier this season. Thomas Jefferson has lost 39 consecutive games.
John Marshall, the only city school with a winning record, is 5-3 and has a chance to make the playoffs for the first time since 1992.
"We have talented kids in the city," school board vice chairwoman Dawn Page said. "Without a doubt."
On Friday, Thomas Jefferson, whose 2009 enrollment was 724, will play a Colonial District game against Hermitage, whose enrollment was 1,789.
"The fact that we're in that same district is mind-blowing," said Kim Bridges, the chairwoman of the Richmond school board. "The status quo is really heartbreaking for a lot of these boys."
Other schools with similar enrollments — perhaps Colonial Heights, Hopewell or Petersburg — would be invited to the new district. Where that leaves the remaining schools is unknown.
VHSL executive director Ken Tilley said it's unlikely that a fifth district will be formed. The current alignment, with four districts making up the Central Region, allows for playoff brackets to be constructed easily.
The board doesn't want its schools to move to Group AA, even though the enrollment of Richmond schools is a better fit for that classification. Few Group AA schools are located near Richmond, making travel more difficult.
That means if the city schools get their own district and remain in Group AAA, a complete overhaul of the Central Region would be necessary.
Tilley will visit Richmond on Monday to discuss redistricting and reclassification. After next week's meeting, a formal request will be made, which would be reviewed by the VHSL at the end of November. Each school already has made an informal request for redistricting.
Richmond Public Schools formed an athletics task force that has spent months looking for ways to improve athletics for its students. The task force presented the idea of redistricting, and the school board had a very positive response, Bridges said.
"It's about the success of our children," Page said. "Athletics and academics have a positive correlation. For some of our children, athletics is a motivation for them to do well in school, because in order to participate in various athletic programs, you have to do well in school."
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