Here are recordings from the meeting.
Next meeting is Wed, Jan. 14, 2009, 3:40 p.m. in the library.
The following is not meant to be any kind of summary or commentary about the meeting.
My wife and I have an 8th grade student, we’ve been at the school since K. We are evaluating our son’s next step in education and whether to remain at Legacy for High School.
Pro’s for remaining at Legacy:
- Avoid drug, violence, and sexed-up culture found in large schools.
- Continuity of teaching.
- Teacher/student ratio, individual attention.
- Highest average standard test scores in the area.
- Closed campus.
- Close knit class.
- Opportunity to fully participate in athletics.
- Familiarity with school governance and regulations.
- Opportunity for students to be positive role models for younger students.
- Graduates all go to college, though sample size is very small.
- Avoid orientation challenges of moving to new school.
- Sense of security, safe environment.
- No smoking areas for students.
- More adult supervision of students, less opportunity for bad behavior of all kinds.
- Be part of a unique small high school experience more tailored to the wishes of individual students.
- Help reverse the decline in elementary school enrollment by preserving the K-12 progression at Legacy.
Con’s for remaining at Legacy:
- Many friends appear intent on leaving, though a lot of this seems to be about sports.
- Lost opportunity to surmount challenges of a more complex school as a step in preparation for highly complex college environment.
- I’ve had several discussions with teachers and administrators on this point. Some maintain that the college transition will be dramatic regardless of where a student comes from, and that so long as the student has solid fundamentals in terms of work ethic, wise choice of friends, sound values, etc., that it is the presence of fundamentals in the student that is the best predictor of a successful college adaptation. And these can be learned in any sized school.
- Others say that students will have to face the opportunity to make bad decisions eventually, that they’ll need to figure out how to avoid those pitfalls, and it’s better to learn that in high school than college. For those students who learn to avoid all of the nihilistic behaviors, this is a fine theory. For those who don’t, however, a later exposure may well have given them the opportunity to become more solid in themselves, and perhaps less susceptible when presented with those opportunities to make bad decisions later on. This type of student will definitely do better with fewer opportunities to go off track in high school.
- Then there are the students who will seek out nihilistic diversions and whether they’re in a Legacy environment or an EHS, they’ll find the trouble they’re after.
- Fewer in-house curriculum offerings.
- Fewer school facilities – classrooms, gyms, showers, labs, track and field, etc.
- Less freedom due to proximity and shared facilities with younger students.
- Parents and teachers in elementary school who want to deep six the high school because they think it consumes school resources that would be better spent on the elementary school, who are too wimpy to own up to their prejudices in public, and who thereby create a non-negotiable divisive undercurrent in the school.
- Leadership by multiple generations of school board directors too political to resolve the previous item.
We’ll add to these lists as things occur to us. If anyone has any additions, please comment.
Proposal: That we hold a meeting during school hours in January between all high school students, all 8th grade students, 8th grade parents as observers, the principal, and no parents or teachers of high school students. The principal would facilitate an orderly discussion between all of the students on the above pros and cons, and the object would be to elicit candid answers from the existing high school students.