A ruling

this week by the Georgia High School Association has some

area private schools calling "foul."

The ruling

restricts extracurricular activities to only those

students who live in a private school's service area,

which is now defined as the county where the school is

situated.

If a

student wants to participate in activities but does not

live in the service area, the student must sit out one

year before he or she can compete.

Late this

week, Landmark Christian School, which is in Fairburn but

draws a large percentage of its students from Coweta and

Fayette counties, issued a statement on the ruling.

"Landmark

Christian School does not consider the GHSA ruling

restricting a private school's service area to only the

county in which the school is located to be fair or

reasonable," the statement read.

The

statement explained that families considering private

schools are affected by the distance to the school from

their homes, not which county the school is in.

"There

presently are situations in public schools where the GHSA

allows students to cross school district or county lines

to attend public schools either nearer their homes or

offering programs they desire. This situation is a double

standard," said the statement.

The

statement closed by saying the ruling was "unfair to

those students who move into a community and who wish to

have the freedom to choose the private school closest

totheir home."

At the

Heritage School in Newnan, headmaster Tom Hudgins said

the ruling really doesn't apply to his school because

it's not a member of GHSA.

But Hudgins

finds it almost laughable that the ruling was supposedly

done to "equalize" the playing field between

private and public schools.

"To

suggest we have an edge is pretty ludicrous. I can't

imagine us playing Newnan or East Coweta and having an

advantage," he said.

Heritage

left the GHSA nearly 18 months ago and belongs to the

Georgia Independent School Association.

The ruling

was spawned after Tom Murphy, speaker of the state House

of Representatives, complained about Bremen High School

having difficulty competing in debate tournaments against

such private schools as Pace Academy.