There is a simple solution to all of this. For the sake of this discussion lets divide schools into 2 basic catergories.
Category A "traditional public school where the athletes have to live in that district to be able to play. Category B " parochial/private/prep/open enrollment public/magnet."
If school A and school B have equal facilities and resources and the coaches are comporable, School B has a competetive advantage. It is common sense. School B can get athletes from anywhere, where as school A can only have athletes who live in their district. Currently NY, NJ, CT, MD DC, DE NC, TN, Al, MS, GA, LA and TX just to name a few do not allow category B schools to play in the public school playoffs. They have seperate state tournaments. Category A and B can play each other in the regular season, but play in separate playoffs. Now you do not have to worry about competetive balance. And they have divisions in each category based on enrollment.
In Ohio I would imagine that out of the 800 schools that compete at least 25% would fall into category B, maybe more. Just separate these schools when it comes to the playoffs.
If a school want to recruit or has open enrollment ,fine. They get to play in category B . Just cut though all of the mess.
Just a thought