Here is my take. I think Iowa needs to look at a bunch of things.
1. Why are we the only state in the entire country with two unions running HS sports? If you dig into this it looks bad and its just confusing.
2. I think if you don't want such a discrepancy in school sized classifications, you need to make the classes smaller. Kansas does this pretty well. Arkansas does it well, but probably two small IMO. If we went to 6 classes both boys and girls (using basketball for example as I know this would be adjusted for other sports). 32,32,32,64,64, rest of schools. right now for boys is 48,64,128,rest of state
shorting the classes gives you a lot closer range of similar sized schools. equaling the playing field I guess. This doesn't really help the DSM public schools though.
3. Using a mandatory multiplier. I think Illinois uses x1.5? Get teams like Granview to 2A, Kuemper to 3A, Assumption to 4A etc. We just don't have enough private schools to have a private division. Plus Dowling would just win everything.
4. As far as this thread and DSM Public getting on a leveling playing field. So where would the level field stop? I can think of 16 teams in this division (take the CR, DSM, Waterloo, Davenport, Sioux City public schools? But if we are using socioeconomic factors then what do you do with schools like Fort Dodge, Marshalltown, Ottumwa etc.? They are 4A schools with half the enrollment and probably not much better off socioeconomically.
Then if all those teams leave and play in their own class for State tournaments. What happens to the Bondurants, Carlise's, Ballards etc...Do they slide up and then get stuck playing in the top "athletic" class. That doesn't seem awesome either.
There is always going to be someone upset. So that is why I would like to start with 1 athletic union and redo classifications like I said above.