4 ms·

A small town of 12,000 has two high schools! That is the problem it seems. Merge them into one. My town has over 85,000 and only one high school.

mikekchar 10y ago
Census data seems to indicate that about 3.5% of the US population is between 15-19 years old. For a town of 12,000 that's 420 students or 140 students per grade. I've taught classes of 42 in high school. It sucks. 30 is doable. 20 is great and is what I would recommend to every school. You are right that you could easily get it down to 1 high school with 5 home rooms of 28 per grade. It's not optimal but not terrible either. 1 high school for 85k people is insanity. I know this is common place in North America (I think the high school I graduated from had 1250 students in my year and I knew of high schools with 3-4 times as many students). I don't have a huge amount of experience in education, but I know enough to say that you are paying for this "economy" with people's futures.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  There are 917 students in the two high schools. So either the residents of Cleveland are remarkably fecund, or else they're pulling in a large number of rural students from outside town.
- Ntrails 10y ago
  I still remember the culture shock moving from a class of 19 to a class of 27 (along with many many other differences). I always wonder how many of the changes were functions of class size, and how many were pure demographics etc.
cafard 10y ago
A friend in her late 50s is still (rightfully, in my view) resentful of her hometown school board's decision to have one mammoth high school where two or three might have been justified. The school board apparently wanted to have a student body large enough to field a very good football team, you see. That worked, but the education not so well.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  The combined school would have 917 students, which would still be considered a small high school by most people's standards.
  - vermontdevil 10y ago
    And the high school in my "city" is over 5,000. Benefits: Cost savings. One principal. One facility to maintain. Cons: Huge - students get less opportunities to participate in top tier sports or theater or clubs.
    - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
      It seems like there would also be benefits in terms of student opportunities, for instance, there would be potential for a wider variety of classes and clubs to choose from.
mason240 10y ago
12,000 isn't a small town, it's a small city. The school I went to had a town/surrounding farmers population of about 1200 (600 in town, guessing for the rural area). It functioned just fine with ~35 students to a grade, ~17 students to a class (each grade had a "band/not-band" schedule).
ideonexus 10y ago
Attempting to merge the schools is where you will see how this is not "natural" segregation. I lived in a town of 38,000 people for five years that had schools that had "naturally" segregated. It was a culture shock for me, having just bought a house for $50k that I figured I could flip and sell for twice that because one block down the street similar homes were going for that much. After a couple of years of working on the house, I learned that it wouldn't matter how much I put into it. Friends and locals informed me that I had bought a house on the "black" street. The homes one street over were on the white street and that when I had kids, they would be going to the black school and soon "come home talking like them." I soon learned that most of the rural south is "naturally segregated" like this... which is a political way of saying that racists have naturally let their racist inclinations dictate the school district lines. One time, the city council tried to move the school district lines to mix the schools up a bit more. Protesters, all white, came out en mass and squashed the motion. When I published a letter to my local paper advocating moving the district lines, I received numerous racist letters in response. We are taught in history classes that the North won the Civil War, but those classes leave out the fact that the South won the insurgency that followed, which is why there are so many monuments to Confederates in Southern states and why--as a woman from Mississippi once told me when complaining about Northern culture, "Our nrs know their place." I don't know what the solution to this is except for slow, persistent cultural progress.
- vermontdevil 10y ago
  Absolutely. My entire family is from the Deep South (Southeast Georgia) dating back to James Oglethorpe. So yeah I've seen this over the years. The situation in Mississippi is what you said - a small city does not need two high schools. But that's how they segregate along racial lines. And yes I know the one school is mixed 50/50 with the bet that the school board is probably dominated by the whites. Things have definitely changed over the years though. I've seen the changes myself with my extended family (I grew up in the midwest). More and more counties in Georgia now go by with one high school or even setting up one to serve more than one county. This is happening mostly due to dwindling population and financial realities. But we still have a ways to go.
goodcanadian 10y ago
My town of about 5000 has two high schools . . . I am not sure what your point is. [EDIT: Of course, there are another 5000-10000 people in the surrounding rural area]

mikekchar 10y ago

Census data seems to indicate that about 3.5% of the US population is between 15-19 years old. For a town of 12,000 that's 420 students or 140 students per grade. I've taught classes of 42 in high school. It sucks. 30 is doable. 20 is great and is what I would recommend to every school. You are right that you could easily get it down to 1 high school with 5 home rooms of 28 per grade. It's not optimal but not terrible either. 1 high school for 85k people is insanity. I know this is common place in North America (I think the high school I graduated from had 1250 students in my year and I knew of high schools with 3-4 times as many students). I don't have a huge amount of experience in education, but I know enough to say that you are paying for this "economy" with people's futures.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
There are 917 students in the two high schools. So either the residents of Cleveland are remarkably fecund, or else they're pulling in a large number of rural students from outside town.
Ntrails 10y ago
I still remember the culture shock moving from a class of 19 to a class of 27 (along with many many other differences). I always wonder how many of the changes were functions of class size, and how many were pure demographics etc.

cafard 10y ago

A friend in her late 50s is still (rightfully, in my view) resentful of her hometown school board's decision to have one mammoth high school where two or three might have been justified. The school board apparently wanted to have a student body large enough to field a very good football team, you see. That worked, but the education not so well.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
The combined school would have 917 students, which would still be considered a small high school by most people's standards.
- vermontdevil 10y ago
  And the high school in my "city" is over 5,000. Benefits: Cost savings. One principal. One facility to maintain. Cons: Huge - students get less opportunities to participate in top tier sports or theater or clubs.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    It seems like there would also be benefits in terms of student opportunities, for instance, there would be potential for a wider variety of classes and clubs to choose from.

mason240 10y ago

12,000 isn't a small town, it's a small city. The school I went to had a town/surrounding farmers population of about 1200 (600 in town, guessing for the rural area). It functioned just fine with ~35 students to a grade, ~17 students to a class (each grade had a "band/not-band" schedule).

ideonexus 10y ago

Attempting to merge the schools is where you will see how this is not "natural" segregation. I lived in a town of 38,000 people for five years that had schools that had "naturally" segregated. It was a culture shock for me, having just bought a house for $50k that I figured I could flip and sell for twice that because one block down the street similar homes were going for that much. After a couple of years of working on the house, I learned that it wouldn't matter how much I put into it. Friends and locals informed me that I had bought a house on the "black" street. The homes one street over were on the white street and that when I had kids, they would be going to the black school and soon "come home talking like them." I soon learned that most of the rural south is "naturally segregated" like this... which is a political way of saying that racists have naturally let their racist inclinations dictate the school district lines. One time, the city council tried to move the school district lines to mix the schools up a bit more. Protesters, all white, came out en mass and squashed the motion. When I published a letter to my local paper advocating moving the district lines, I received numerous racist letters in response. We are taught in history classes that the North won the Civil War, but those classes leave out the fact that the South won the insurgency that followed, which is why there are so many monuments to Confederates in Southern states and why--as a woman from Mississippi once told me when complaining about Northern culture, "Our nrs know their place." I don't know what the solution to this is except for slow, persistent cultural progress.

vermontdevil 10y ago
Absolutely. My entire family is from the Deep South (Southeast Georgia) dating back to James Oglethorpe. So yeah I've seen this over the years. The situation in Mississippi is what you said - a small city does not need two high schools. But that's how they segregate along racial lines. And yes I know the one school is mixed 50/50 with the bet that the school board is probably dominated by the whites. Things have definitely changed over the years though. I've seen the changes myself with my extended family (I grew up in the midwest). More and more counties in Georgia now go by with one high school or even setting up one to serve more than one county. This is happening mostly due to dwindling population and financial realities. But we still have a ways to go.

goodcanadian 10y ago

My town of about 5000 has two high schools . . . I am not sure what your point is. [EDIT: Of course, there are another 5000-10000 people in the surrounding rural area]