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| - - Condescending admin
- No changes ever made from student issues
- Open door policy for lunch
- Good variety of fun clubs to join
I graduated with the class of 2005.
Not sure if this is common, but the turn-over rate for Principal was ridiculous. They were dropping like flies. And some of them were pretty bad.
The deans were not the nicest people in the world. True, they had to be tough and deal with a lot of stupid kids, but it wouldn't hurt to not be mean to everyone. For the most part, they were condescending to students and belittling.
My senior year, I contracted Mono and missed a lot of school. Even though my doctor faxed them a note saying this, I got crap from my dean every time I missed school. She kept asking me why I was "playing this cat and mouse game with her." For the most part, I was a straight A, band-playing, elected officer in the National Key Club student, so I'm not sure what she was talking about. She found out where I lived and harassed me about how I lived close to school and would still be late to or miss class, even though I consistently told her I was sick .
Teachers were hit or miss. I had some awesome ones (Ms. Gross stands out most in my mind, she was just a wonderful person in general and hilarious and really cared about what she taught)
and some bad ones (Mr. Rowe, my physics teacher, said the first day of class that it was his last year before retirement and that "he didn't care anymore.")
On this same note, classes were also hit or miss. Health was a joke, while Microbiology was awesome!
When any of these issues were reported to admin, you'd get a "that's nice, thanks for your input *insert name* " if you were lucky. Due to tenure and lack of care or trust in students, no problems ever got fixed.
Funding for the arts was being slashed my last couple years here. It got to the point where we were making shit out of cardboard for my *ceramics* class. (No, seriously.) And the school said we weren't even allowed to have fundraisers to raise money for more clay because that wouldn't be fair... But then somehow the sports teams always got new equipment and they were allowed to have fundraisers (IE: the football team's spaghetti/barbeque cook out).
We also tried to start a Gay Straight Alliance and that went down like a ton of bricks. Students harassed us, parents harassed the school and the school gave us crap. They wouldn't sponsor us unless we changed our name to "The Rainbow Club." (Not joking). This was because the school was publicly funded and not everyone thought homosexuality was okay. I respect other people's opinions, but there's a time when eventually you need to get over that and stop being stupid. Remember when it wouldn't have been okay for students to have an African American Club? Yeah.
When we started putting up flyers around the school, admin told us we had to ask their PERMISSION to put up flyers and ask where we would be ALLOWED to put them. When we pointed out that students had been putting up flyers where and when they please for YEARS with no issues, they started enacting all these new rules about flyer placement.
Every year during Homecoming week, there are many traditions. One of the biggest of which was decorating the hallways. On the south side of the school, there are four hallways in a square on the second level and each had a designated grade level. The freshmen decorated one hallway, the sophomores another and so on. Each year had their own color and created a new theme for that year based on that color and they would go ALL OUT decorating these hallways. It was awesome. Admin banned this, among other traditions. Their reasoning? Parents were complaining that students were getting up too early to work on the hallways... even though it was VOLUNTARY. The seniors got together and created and sold mass t-shirts that had a tombstone on them and said R.I.P. Spirit Week 1967-2004. (See uploaded pictures.) We even got in the paper for it! The school was not happy. I still have mine. :o)
The school received some negative publicity when a then current dean and former teacher was arrested AGAIN for beating his wife. Again? You mean this happened before? And they hired him anyway? That's nice.
And the superintendent, Culver, is a power-abusing douche.
Positives.
There is an open door policy for lunch. But they have to do this. The cafeteria only holds about 200 students safely and there are approx. 1500 students enrolled any given year.
Some things were just fine, like classes or teachers
Basically, I just don't like public education. They squash your creativity and instead of learning in classes, you now have to spend all your time preparing for these stupid achievement tests so the school can get federal funding.
Public school is cheap, but is it really worth it?
I was NOT happy during my time here (2001-2005) and was not sad at all to graduate and leave this place in my past. :o/
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