<p>My school's average- about 5000 kids, 1250 of whom are seniors. We're overcrowded, though, since we only have 3 metal detectors and not enough trailers for everybody.</p>
<p>I think 150 per class is about optimal.</p>
<p>we don't have any metal detectors and the security staff are school employees, they make sure kids get to class/go off campus after school hours and handle kids who are having a hard time participating in class appropriately.
Recently a school resource officer who is seattle police has also been assigned to the building , for some reason the north end of seattle which is generally much whiter and much more affluent had 3 or 4 resource officers, but no other precinct in Seattle had any, guess those po' black kids are better behaved? @@
anyway, the woman assigned to this school has a lot of schools on her beat but she looks like she will be a good addition to the community.
I like the way that the staff try and get to know kids in ways other than handling out discipline. When told that the parents were going to be helping with college advising, one member of security staff told us that he was going to personally hand deliver students for us to advise- he kept his word too!</p>
<p>Of all the schools that my children attended, I liked the class size to be around 125 kids. Small enough to give personal attention, large enough to provide a full array of programs. However, because this was a private school, pre selection played a large role in this. For a public school, I would guess about double that would be a good size. </p>
<p>However, as Emeraldkity, says, it does not matter if a school is optimum in size if it does not suit your child's needs. My former neighbor loves their private highschool which has only about 30 kids in the graduating class, and the results are pretty impressive for that school, as it is not particularly selective though it is private. Some kids need the the offerings of a larger school whereas others do need the personal attention of a small school. Small school does not necessarily mean small classes, by the way, as any Catholic school person could tell you. There are small schools where the kids are jammed in their classes. I would say, better a larger school with small classes.</p>
<p>For elementary school, I eschewed our public school which I thought was too large, and just too diverse, more in terms of issues with the kids, for a small catholic school. It has really made our lives so much easier. /Though the public school had special programs targeting my kids' issues, they were pull outs, and I felt it was important they have the structure of staying in class. How it helps an attention deficit kid to have rotating pull outs is beyond me. Definitely to accomodate the schedule, not the kids. The class I watched had half the kids being pulled out for any variety of things from enrichment, to behavior mod, speech therapy, ESL, tutoring, etc. It made my heaad spin. The small classes and personal attention are working out, I am happy to say. My problem now is what kind of highschool these guys should consider, given their elemenary/middle school.</p>
<p>I've taught in public high schools ranging in size from 450 to 3000. My D attended a private (all-girls) school with about 150 in the entire upper school. My son's school was around 350 in 9-12. </p>
<p>In a school of 450, the (single) principal can know every single student and know the foibles of every student. Students are treated as individuals, and sometimes (as a result) disciplinary measures vary by student, which can create some resentment, however appropriate it is. All staff members know each other and often discuss the students. Programs are slightly limited (it's hard to teach more than one foreign language, sports options are few, etc.). </p>
<p>In the two schools over 2000, I only knew other science teachers, and rarely even spoke to teachers in other departments. Four vice principals (in both cases) handled discipline according to standard inflexible procedures. Lots of choices for good students--and lots of tracking of poorer students. It was very difficult to change the system to meet a student's needs, although not impossible. </p>
<p>One year I taught at both a 1200-student school (two vice-principals and a principal) and the 450-student school mentioned above. By the end of the year, despite being in each place roughly the same amount of time, I knew most of the students by name at the 450-student school---and none outside my classes at the 1200-student school. Even now when I sub at the 450-student school, students know who I am, because their older siblings had me--six years ago and more, in some cases. </p>
<p>So my vote? Keep it under 500. Offer different programs in different schools. Take the 2000-student school and give each of the four wings (or floors or whatever) a theme, even if it's something as predictable as "theater," "math and science," "foreign languages," and "music," or red/green/blue/yellow. Assign one principal to each group, and expect him/her to know each and every student in his area. Let all the students in the group have lunch at the same time. Why is lunch so important? Because if all the teachers have lunch at the same time in the same place, good things happen for the students. The science teachers get together with the history teachers to organize a field trip.... or the math and the English teacher discover they're both having the same problems with the kid whose parents say he's fine.</p>
<p>My son's school has 3,800 students. They start with 1,200 freshmen but fewer than 700 graduate 4 years later. Since we consolidated the two 5A schools into one huge school, half the opportunities (student council, athletics, etc..) exist for twice the kids. And they wonder why our gang and drug problem has significantly increased since the move towards Texas biggie sized. Oh, and we still haven't won that state football championship, but we do have the most teen pregnancies. :(</p>
<p>My younger two attend a 2A school with half the APs, but everyone takes the tests and does well. Students can participate in band, athletics, and theatre simultaneously unlike the large school where you are lucky to make one team or club. The teachers have students for more than one year (at the large school which is on 4 x 4 you get a teacher for half a year only!) and get to know them well. </p>
<p>What is that quote? Something along the lines of "tired kids raise no hell." Yup.</p>
<p>oh addendum: in the paper today it reported that 53% of the college freshman from the biggie sized mega high needed remediation before they could attend community college classes.</p>
<p>dmd ::::hands on hips::::
have you been talking to Bill?
I really hope our school doesn't do the small schools thing ( for one you couldn't have a principal assigned to each school- one reason why the district is looking at closing schools is to reduce administration costs- a principal at a school with 250 or so kids would make the same as a principal of 1700)
Garfield actually does have lunch at same time- this is so clubs and tutoring can happen. No one eats in the cafeteria anyway- although since they reduced the time from 1 hr kids do have to run back faster from Starbucks.
Her previous school had advisory groups that met once a week or so. All staff including school secretaries have groups of 8-10 students and keep them through middle-high school. garfield had something like that as well, but since they stick strictly to state guidelines, they can't count them for class time, since some advisors aren't certified teachers and aren't using "curriculum"
The small school program that Gates is pushing involves students choosing in 9th grade the course path they want through high school. I feel this is too limiting, expecially since I have heard students aren't able to change schools once they start.
I don't want certain groups of kids to be walled off from the rest. I don't have a problem with a district offering a small school approach for those who want it, but I like that my daughter is able to take college prep classes at the pace she is ready for. One AP class or 5, it is up to her.
I do agree that for many districts and students high schools may need to be reinvented. They aren't working for too many kids.
<a href="http://www.2005summit.org/%5B/url%5D">http://www.2005summit.org/</a></p>
<p>Nope, I just happen to agree with Bill. </p>
<p>I'm talking about each of the four vice-principals being in charge of one school---doesn't change the total numbers any. Oh wait, reduces it by one, because the four VPs don't need to report to the one P any more. </p>
<p>Yes, WA does have a nice single-lunch tradition, although more and more schools are abandoning it to reduce costs.</p>
<p>I don't know any students in the 500-student schools who are "forced" into an AP. In addition, a school focus doesn't mean the other courses aren't available--just less diverse. An "arts" school might have multiple arts choices and only one math track, for example.</p>
<p>The advisory system does mean than each teacher knows just 10 or so students very well, and his/her own students sort of well--and the rest of the students not at all. In my experience, it's better for <em>all</em> the teachers to know <em>most</em> of the students sort of well.</p>
<p>I think the teachers do need collaboration time but isn't that what all these early dismissals and teacher work days are for?</p>
<p>Our local high school isn't really divided into small schools but does have different tracks. biotech & maritime and finance and engineering I think. I can see the advantages for teachers and some students, i just worry that kids wont have a choice if we go to neighborhood schools.
My daughter was interested in biotech, but her math wasn't at the level required. If she went there she would have had to take a lot of math before she could get the science she wanted. I like the school where she is at, cause she was able to take the level of science while getting support in math.
Another school which is actually pretty small anyway ( 1100) has freshmen divided into 4 groups and those groups take their core classes together. They may also be extending this into 10th & 11th grades. I have heard though from students who went through this, that if they didn't like the mix of students in their group, it was really tough. Many students do it for 2 years and then run to running start at the community college. I would rather have the students in the high school and if they want advanced classes to take them through AP or online like Digital Learning COmmons.
taking classes at the community college is such a pain to schedule, although I admit some students are really ready to be out of high school.</p>
<p>This is assuming attrition over the years, so that you start off with a max of 220 or so freshmen. My graduating class was about 140. While I was there, I thought it was stifflingly small (particularly in the varsity sports department), and I would sometimes look longingly towards the huge schools (500+ per class) that my other friends were attending. After talking to other college students about their high school experience, I think that small high schools are the way to go. Many have said trivially that there were quite a few students who walked who they'd never seen in all four years of high school. As a 17- or 18-year old, that's not that intimidating. But I couldn't imagine being thrown into that as a 13-year old.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>So my vote? Keep it under 500. Offer different programs in different schools. Take the 2000-student school and give each of the four wings (or floors or whatever) a theme, even if it's something as predictable as "theater," "math and science," "foreign languages," and "music," or red/green/blue/yellow. Assign one principal to each group, and expect him/her to know each and every student in his area. Let all the students in the group have lunch at the same time. Why is lunch so important? Because if all the teachers have lunch at the same time in the same place, good things happen for the students. The science teachers get together with the history teachers to organize a field trip.... or the math and the English teacher discover they're both having the same problems with the kid whose parents say he's fine.>></p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Dmd:</p>
<p>That is what was proposed for our hs, and what parents rejected. We are a very diverse district. Students were going to be assigned randomly to schools to prevent self-segregation by race or ability; so there would have been no guarantee that the math/science kid would end up in the math/science school (all the Asians might have ended there if given a choice, undermining diversity). There was only two Latin teachers; there was no guarantee that a kid who liked, say, math/science could take Latin if the two Latin teachers were assigned to two different schools. So we've opted to have small schools that operate largely at the 9th and 10th grades, with easy crossing (my S has taken classes with teachers from all 5 schools by now); in 11th and 12th grades, APs are available to all (there's only one AP-Physics class for the whole school, ditto AP-French).
Teachers have meetings twice a week, either by department or by school, so they do get to know one another.</p>
<p>My class has 55 kids, about 230 in the whole high school, and I love it. If we didn't share a town with a LAC, I might feel a little disadvantaged, but since any advanced classes can just be taken at a college instead of in AP classes, there's no problem. We know all the teachers, and all the students, and it's generally a very friendly place. Scheduling conflicts are easy to avoid, if you're determined to take something, because the administration will be flexible (usually) to accomodate students.</p>
<p>Rabi:</p>
<p>I have a strong disagreement with any HS that suggests a local college for classes. That it abdicating their responsiblity, IMO. It's an easy cop-out.</p>
<p>My kids both went to small high schools - my son's school had about 700 students, my daughter's school has about 600. I do like the sense of cohesiveness and closeness among students and faculty. I'm glad they have had this opportunity.</p>
<p>small schools are much better</p>
<p>When my older S took AP-French, there were only 9 students in the class. There were 2000 students in the whole school. Recently, the superintendent tried to close down classes that had fewer than 15 students in them (cap at 30) and relented only after pressure from parents. If we moved to neighborhood schools or real, autonomous schools, even more classes would be eliminated and choice drastically curtailed. Right now things work because all the small schools are under one roof and boundaries between them are totally porous.
Still, I think a school of about 1,000 would be my ideal.</p>
<p>Like a few people have said, the problem with having small schools is that unless you go to a magnet, boarding school, or a public school in a wealthy area it is hard to get many AP/IB classes. Our school has 1200 students, and we rarely get more than 6/7 classes going because not enough people sign up for them.</p>
<p>My daughter is in a class of over 1200 students. Yikes. Next year, a new high school will open, but the seniors will all stay at the old high school "so they can graduate together". My son will be a freshman at the new high school, and presumably his class size will be no larger than 500. It will be interesting to see if they can keep all the course options available that they've had with the jumbo high school - there's already some concern about continuing to offer Japanese, as well as some of the "lesser" APs.</p>
<p>I graduated in a class of 640, and thought I knew everybody until the graduation ceremony where I was shocked by just how many students I didn't know.</p>
<p>"I have a strong disagreement with any HS that suggests a local college for classes. That it abdicating their responsiblity, IMO. It's an easy cop-out."</p>
<p>I don't feel the same way. I think it can be better, actually, to take college-level classes at a college, vs. trying to make a high school "pretend" it's a college. First of all, you get full unambiguous college credit for the courses. Secondly, college professors can be more fully qualified to teach subjects at a college level than many high school teachers are.</p>
<p>To me, the real problem is when a high school responds to its own lack of options by holding a student back. Forcing the student to take other, lower-level high school courses at their school simply because they do not offer more college-level courses that he/she is clearly ready for. I think it's far preferable to respond to the situation by giving credit for appropriate college courses that the school doesn't offer.</p>
<p>I'm of two minds about the use of college courses.</p>
<p>My S has been taking college courses since 9th grade. And yet, I feel that the easy availability of such courses also enables the school to shirk some of its duty to provide more advanced classes. Not everyone is able to take college classes. For my S, auditing college classes during the regular high school day entailed some fancy re-labeling of phantom classes at the school as MA law prohibits study hall. It also caused major scheduling headaches. Evening classes do not cause such scheduling problems, but they must be taken ON TOP of high school classes (because of the no-study hall policy). Last semester, my S had 9 instead of the usual 7 classes as a result.
My S is happy with the choices he made. I'm more concerned about the consequences for bright, motivated students who would benefit from having more advanced classes at the school itself, yet still be able to pursue their ECs, whether this be work, sports, arts, or community service. It can be argued that there are not enough students to form post-AP classes; but it could be equally argued that if such classes existed, they would attract students. I know one 11th grader who took BC Calc in 10th grade and whose parents did not want her to take Multivariable Calculus in the evening because they could not pick her up at 9:30pm and did not want her to walk home in the dark. Every year, the school has at least 10 kids going to Multivariable Calc in the evening; the overwhelming majority are boys (hmmm... this sounds like an entry in women in math/science ;))</p>