Debate
Should all high schools have fewer than 1,000 students?

YES
Sid Chapman teaches economics at Morrow High School in Clayton County, Georgia, a rapidly growing Atlanta suburb. He has taught for 16 years, seven of them at Morrow. He is president of the Clayton County Education Association.

The newly renovated building is nice and clean with fresh paint and new tile floors. The sea of mobile classrooms is still there, which we affectionately call "Mustang Meadows" after our mascot. Nearly 2,000 students crowd our halls.

Why not build a second high school to accommodate our exploding population, rather than spending so much on a renovation? Why keep all these students together? These are the questions voiced by many in Mustang Meadows. The need for relief is there. The frustration of too many students grows.

Having taught in a school with an even larger student body of 3,000, this is nothing new to me. It is a nightmare to learn the faces and names of so many. It can only be a similar dilemma for an administrator to attempt to maintain discipline and pray that there is never a serious situation that could lead to "code red." Who would know an intruder?

High school students are very social individuals. They need of a lot of personal attention by adults as they prepare to leave the secondary portion of their education journey. But in a big school, it is virtually impossible for teachers, much less the administrators, to know the students, and as for the students getting to know each other--really forming those close ties that are so important--forget it. What ever happened to the concept of a tight-knit school community?

Certainly, there are those who say none of this is important in the educating of America's young. The whole idea of building relationships that could last a lifetime and learning a sense of community, well who needs that? The notion that so many kids slip through the cracks and are never identified for special needs in big schools, well let's just ignore that too.

But the number one complaint from teachers is the lack of discipline in public schools. Having smaller schools is a huge step in the right direction for solving this ever-present problem. Giving kids a sense of community would allow for better discipline and a much improved learning environment.

Yes, the pool for superior athletes might be smaller, but surely a superior learning environment is more important!

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NO
Jim Politis began teaching in a 200-student high school in 1966, and went on to schools with 1,500 and 1,700, all in Montgomery County, Maryland. He left full-time teaching in 1998. He now substitutes regularly throughout the county.

I believe it would be a mistake to severely limit the size of high schools. While I am not comfortable with "mega schools" of 2,000 to 3,000 or even more, I do think a student body of 1,500 to 1,700 offers significant advantages of scale.

I am familiar with a small school in a more rural part of our district, with a music program that it is rightfully proud of. This program would do justice to a school twice its size, but foreign language study struggles.

A school needs a "critical mass" of students to allow the diversity of programs necessary to offer a well-rounded program to every child. Even at 1,500 students, a school is likely to be forced to offer upper level courses in alternate years. The constraints of "building the master schedule" may force a student to decide if she wants to take AP biology or calculus in that third period slot. Is it to be psychology II or history of literature for the morning class? Students must choose because many classes are offered as "singles."

With the emphasis on high-stakes testing, the smaller school will also be severely taxed to offer an arts curriculum. Shall we cut ceramics II or string ensemble from the course offerings? Introduction to art or beginners band may both survive in the small school but will the sequential courses be available?

The administration in my own county, attempting to stretch human resources, may schedule a teacher in two or even three schools. While substituting for a music teacher I taught second graders violin, worked with the young clarinets and flutes, and then jumped in my car to rush to the middle school for eighth-grade general band. This is not only stressful for the teacher but also wasteful, since one period is devoted to travel and not teaching.

The traditional argument that the staff "gets to know all the kids" or that "no one falls between the cracks" won't wash for me. The youngster trying to blend into the wall will be just as hard to "see" among 800 as 1,800, and he actually has a better chance of finding a fellow "round peg in a square hole" in the larger school.

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