Some points from a article on Charters and 1A. Unfortunately, this is only going to get worse. With so many charters, the only hope is that they create a division for these charters or move them up. You can see if you gave 1A the same advantage you would have more of a competitive platform, unfortunately if you did that there would be no 1a's. A 25 mile radius is crazy.
"The NCHSAA, like any good organization, is never going to willfully
turn away new members, especially when those new members are arriving in
droves like charter schools.
According to a report in the News & Observer,
the State Board of Education has given final approval for 26 new
charter schools to open this fall ? the largest expansion of the program
since the late 1990s.
The number of charter schools in North Carolina has expanded sharply since legislators eliminated the 100-school cap in 2011.
There are now 127 charter schools in the state,
and the number could rise to more than 200 in the very near future. A
total of 71 applications had been received in January to open new
charter schools in 2015. Eleven of those applicants got the go-ahead
from a screening board earlier this month."
"Students at these schools now must meet geographical requirements if
they live in the county where the school is located, live within a
25-mile radius of the school (or a distance established by the system)
or are a member of a parochial church.
Just FYI: A 25-mile radius around Raleigh includes eight other counties, along with Wake County.
A 25-mile radius around Winston-Salem spreads to
almost Greensboro to the east, to Lexington to the south, nearly to
Yadkinville to the west and almost to the Hanging Rock State Park to the
north.
This encompasses an area of, oh, I don't know, about a quarter of a million people.
A 25-mile radius around Davidson includes
Charlotte, the largest city in the state with about three quarters of a
million people.
Compare that to Beaufort (pop. 5,000). You can
add the Down East area to the geographical area that East Carteret can
pull from, and it's still less than 10,000 people."