For the 2023-2024 school year, it was decided that Mississippi will have seven high school classifications after the MHSAA executive committee voted to add a class 7A.This new alignment will place the twenty four largest schools in 7A, the next twenty four in 6A and the next twenty four in 5A. 1A-4A will have forty schools for a class.
Lafayette, being one of the smaller 5A schools, would not likely move up to 6A, but could become one of the bigger schools in 5A, leveling the playing field for all sports.
Possibly the biggest change for sports will be the classes’ regions. Instead of having eight schools in every region, the numbers will be dwindled down to six. With six teams in each region, football teams now have to schedule two additional non-region opponents each season. Similarly, baseball teams will have to cut a significant number of non-region games and either continue to play three-game series for region opponents or shift to a home-and-home model, making district games more important than ever.
Bigger schools such as Tupelo, Oxford, and Desoto have been projected to be likely candidates for 7A schools. The rapid growth of schools makes it difficult to predict where they will land in these new classifications, but athletes are hopeful this will even the size difference in schools.
A big problem with the current system is the enrollment differences in classes. Under the current classification system, Grenada High (1,057 students) and Tupelo High (1,907) both compete in the same region. This is due to the fact that the schools are close to each other. Schools that are similar in size are hours away and aren’t close enough to play each other in that region. This also makes the playing field uneven due to the significant size difference between schools. These effects were observed in the Grenada Chargers football program, when, in 2021, the team started 4-0 in non-region play and ended 1-6 in region play. Overall, the Chargers beat teams with less students, but struggled with schools that had a bigger population, going 3-2 with schools having 300 or less students and then going 1-4 against schools with at least 300 more students.
Based on 2021-2022 enrollment numbers — 2022-2023 numbers are not yet available — these are MHSAA’s projected regions for class 5A-7A. A large number of North Mississippi schools are projected to be ranked as 7A.
COMMODORE MEDIA GROUP 
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