The Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, or TAPPS, is an organization headquartered in Salado, Texas which creates rules for, and sometimes administers, almost all athletic and academic contests for non-public high schools in the American state of Texas. (Texas, unlike most states, has separate organizations for public and private schools, but public and private schools may schedule each other in competition.)
Activities range from football and other sports to academic and fine arts competitions.
Like the UIL, TAPPS aligns member schools into districts by geography and enrollment size for various contests. Each contest has a slightly different alignment based on the participating schools, but most follow the same basic framework. The districts are mostly decided behind closed doors by TAPPS every even year, and are an attempt to keep schools within a certain distance of their home town when attending competitions. Like the UIL, the districts are the first progression to the state championship.
Schools are further broken down with a letter classification to separate them from other schools of varying sizes. The purpose is ensure that schools compete only with others with similar size talent pools and resources. TAPPS's general classifications are 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, and previously 6A; unlike the UIL, whose official designations are strictly alphabetic, TAPPS officially uses alphanumeric designations for its classifications. The largest schools are classified as 5A (6A from the fall of 2005 until TAPPS returned to 5 classifications for the 08-09 school year), and the smallest are known as 1A. However, TAPPS uses different classification schemes in some other competitions (also by enrollment; lower numbers indicate lower enrollment unless otherwise indicated):
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