AUGUSTA — With a final vote less than two months away, the Maine Principals’ Association Classification Committee decided Tuesday to make no changes to a proposal that would expand high school basketball from four classes to five.

The proposal will go before the MPA’s Interscholastic Committee on Thursday and, barring any significant changes, will go to the full membership for an April 30 vote. If it passes the full membership, the five basketball classes will begin next season.

Also, the Classification Committee approved changes by the Football Committee, which last week raised the cutoff for Class A to 845 students, allowing Biddeford and Noble to drop to Class B. Originally, Windham was slated to move from Eastern to Western Class A, but when the school expressed a desire to remain in the East, Deering was moved to the West, giving each Class A division seven teams.

The classification committee’s vote on the basketball issue was unanimous, but not without debate and discussion.

“The concern comes where the (classification) numbers are and placement in the North or South (division),” said Gerry Durgin, an MPA assistant executive director. “No one has expressed opposition with the idea of five classes, just the implementation of it.”

Phil St. Onge, assistant principal at Nokomis High in Newport, said of the proposal: “It’s not perfect. It’s not going to get any better. If we keep changing it, we’ll just make different enemies.”

A classification committee member, Todd Sampson, athletic director at Mt. Ararat High in Topsham, said Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference members voted 27-2 to ask the committee to table the five-class proposal so more time could be spent studying it.

The committee read a letter from the KVAC president, Jim Leonard, the athletic director at Maine Central Institute. The letter outlined the problems KVAC’s schools have with the five-class proposal: No regional tournaments in the AA division, the largest school division; the fear that AA and A would lose playoff spots, and questions as to the effect the new Heal point differential would have on the new alignment.

Under the current Heal point system used to determine playoff seeding in most Maine high school sports, 40 points are assigned for a Class A win, 35 for a Class B win, and 30 and 25 for Class C and D, respectively. Under the proposal to expand to five classes, Heal point values would become 40, 38, 36, 34, 32, from largest division to smallest, in an effort to encourage cross-divisional play.

In the five-class proposal, the KVAC would include schools in three classes and five divisions, much like the league crosses class and divisional barriers now. Winslow Junior High Assistant Principal Chris Preble said schools are confusing scheduling with the tournament.

Should the five-class proposal fail April 30, the Classification Committee has a four-class proposal similar to the one used over the last two seasons ready as a backup. If the proposal fails, the committee will have to decide if five classes in basketball is worth pursuing again.

“I worry if it’s defeated, where do we go next,” said committee chair Bunky Dow, athletic director at Mt. Desert Island. “What happens if it goes down?”

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