Delaware State News
GEORGETOWN — Chancellor William B. Chandler III on Thursday refused to prevent the Henlopen Athletic Conference from transferring Milford High School to its Northern Division, home of its bigger and arguably more competitive members.
That means, for at least the next two school years, Milford will be in the same division with Dover, Caesar Rodney, Smyrna, Sussex Central, Sussex Tech and Cape Henlopen. The Milford School District sued after being transferred from the Southern Division, saying the conference improperly adopted a rule on how enrollment is determined.
The seven schools with the highest enrollment in the 14-team league are placed in the North; the others, in the South.
As a member of the Southern Division last fall, Milford advanced to Delaware’s Division II football tournament and won its first state championship in the sport. The Northern Division champion moves on to the Division I tourney, which features larger schools.
Chancellor Chandler said Court of Chancery does not serve as an appeals court for the resolution of disputes within unincorporated organizations in which membership is voluntary, such as the conference. Even if he were wrong about the nature of Milford’s case, he said, the case still would be dismissed because it was filed too late.
Athletic directors in the conference ruled in November that all ninth- through 12th-grade pupils should be counted toward a school’s enrollment. With the special education students in Milford’s "intensive learning center" included in its count, the school’s enrollment became the seventh-largest in the conference.
Milford was placed in the North. Polytech High, formerly the seventh-largest but now the eighth, moved from the North to the South.
The conference’s alignment is determined every two years based on enrollments as of Sept. 30. Orginally, the figures had Milford remaining in the South.
But a protest by Polytech in November prompted the athletic directors’ vote and the realignment.
In the weeks following the athletic directors’ decision, the superintendents of the school districts represented in the conference declined to act on the issue. So did then-Secretary of Education Valerie Woodruff. But Milford did not sue until April 15.
If he were not dismissing the case, the judge said, a highly expedited schedule would be necessary to resolve all its arguments in time to accommodate scheduling of fall sports. The court, he said, should not be placed in such a position.
Milford contended the conference provided inadequate notice that a vote would be taken on the question of whether to count ILC students. Noel Primos, attorney for the conference, said that while the notice was issued later than required, Milford was aware the vote was coming up.
Milford’s lawyer, David Rutt, said that was so, but other districts did not have adequate time to prepare for the meeting.
Chancellor Chandler seemed to agree at least partially with Mr. Rutt on that point. The judge said the conference appears "to have done all this in a pell-mell way. This creates suspicion you’re trying to single out Milford."
Mr. Primos responded that Milford was the only school that omitted ILC students from the count it presented to the conference.
According to Mr. Rutt, the omission was made because those students were in a program that was not part of the high school, but merely was situated on the high school campus. But Mr. Primos countered that eight of the 20 students in the program took mainstream classes, those who graduated received Milford diplomas and one of the students was a member of Milford’s boys track team during the just-completed school year.
Besides winning a state championship in football, Milford also did so during the winter in wrestling and during the spring in Division II boys’ track and softball.
Chancellor Chandler pointedly asked Mr. Rutt whether Milford was seeking "the right to play teams smaller than you so you’re sure of winning?"
What Milford had at stake, Mr. Rutt said, was a "personal interest" it hoped the court would protect. But Chancellor Chandler repeatedly questioned whether the school district had a case worthy of further consideration in Court of Chancery.
After hearing more than 90 minutes of arguments, he decided it did not.
He said Milford can renew its effort to convince the conference to change its rule on enrollment — and it can quit the league if it remains dissatisfied.
Afterward, Milford athletic director Glen Stevenson said his district will drop the matter.
"There was a rumor we’d drop out of the conference," he said. "That was never a thought."
