Let’s Build a Magnet High School in North Rapid — by a Rapid City Teacher

Let’s think about it:

Consider the concept of a small magnet high school, let’s say 600 to 700 students. Imagine this high school built on land already owned by the Rapid City Area Schools in a neighborhood. Consider this high school serving some of the most at risk students we see at Rapid City Central, the population from North Middle School. Imagine this school built in the empty, but beautiful field just between North and OLC, the one time Halley Airport.

Benefits:

• Relieve overcrowding at Central High School by 700 students.
• Create an environment of continuity for our at risk students. They could move from Horace Mann to North and then to OLC.
• Let teachers use strategies for reading and math that have already been implemented.
• Allow teachers to establish relationships with students to help ensure success.
• Create a smaller school with team spirit and more opportunity.
• Allow the District to better track students and keep them on track for graduation.
• Revitalize North Rapid City.
• Establish better relations through Learn and Serve (Mall and new corridor businesses).
• Ease the transportation conundrum for many of our students.

In a nutshell: better learning conditions, ease of getting to school, continuity of services, establishment of trusted relationships, use of strategies that help ensure success, creation of school pride, better follow up of students, and lastly, increased success in graduation.

For years Rapid City Central has bemoaned the idea of a third high school. If a third high school were built on the southside, they say, Central would become (and I will not mince words) the “ghetto high school”. So this proposal in essence says fine, we will take the North population and establish a learning environment that breeds success. Central, on the other hand can still make renovations (perhaps $20 million instead of $35 million), but allocate $15 million for this project.

Possible problems: Central still struggles with graduation numbers after project. Next steps? Too late, already spent the money, let’s move on.

Overall problem:  anonymity breeds failure. Students who are 15 to 18 years old are too young to become numbers instead of names. We as adults don’t like it, so we cannot assume that our youth enjoy it.

This is an idea that could solve more effectively the problems we face with graduation rates. Once in awhile we have to think outside the box and view our situation through a more idealistic, yet pragmatic, lens.

The reality is that many students will still drop out as the population increases at Central High School.  We as adults can no longer think in adages such as walking up hill both ways in a snow storm when we were kids. Many of our parents went through crowded situations at Central, and endured the problems our students are enduring today. We as the responsible adults must realize that just because we made it does not mean others will. I visit with friends that attended the old Central (now Dakota) and they talk of the problems they encountered there as some sort of a badge of honor. We need to see hardships through a different light, not the “I made it, why can’t you?”

To reply to this Community Forum piece, send an email to eabraha@mindspring.com.

Response from Suzan Nolan:

When I read this suggestion, I was intrigued. An overriding problem at Central is the size of the school. I was a counselor there for two years. At that time, I thought, if I were 16 years old again, I would never make it at this school. There were just too many people, too many ways to get lost in the system, too many problems. That was ten years ago. The situation has only gotten worse.

Smaller schools make for closer communities and better learning. I know that because I went to a high school of  250 students ( all girls)  and I was well known by the faculty and the rest of the students. Learning was a priority for me and my classmates.

I think learning is a priority for students at Central and for their teachers as well. I have never adhered to the idea that schools and the people who work in them don’t care about kids. They do care deeply about kids but they are human, too, and teachers and administrators get overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the needs they are trying to meet. They often feel a lack of support from administration who is also trying to keep their head above water.    

Smaller schools make lots of sense and there is ample research to bear this out. That’s why the District tries to keep the enrollment in primary grades at a small number.  So I agree wholeheartedly with the idea. I wonder where the money will come from  since Central has begun a huge remodeling plan to deal with the issue of ninth graders.    

Another side of this issue is that small schools are a step in the right direction but they aren’t a panacea. These small schools need to have  an administration that listens to teachers, parents, and students. The rules must be clear and the expectations high. Students and teachers should play a significant part in the decisions of the school. The morale in overly large schools is not good and if we go to the concept of smaller schools, we can’t take the administrative ”ways of doing things”  we use for large schools and just overlay them onto a small school. There must be a sense of being able to have a say, giving input into decisions, feeling listened to and valued, no matter whether one is a student, a teacher or a parent.

Small schools should include very diverse populations. We don’t want all the kids with problems in a small school.  We need a curriculum that is challenging and relevant, and a student body that consists of young people with various abilities. Young people today should be involved in web design, curriculum design, TV production, learning to navigate the stock market, planting a garden and raising food for the school cafeteria, planning healthy meals for the cafeteria, buying locally grown materials that they can’t grow in a garden, and lots of other local issues. A small school would need a curriculum that meets the state standards but may be delivered in a different way than the regular lecture that is still too prevalent in our schools. Small schools could be more innovative in the type of curriculum and the delivery of information.  We want to create students who are reflective thinkers, who have the time to create and think with their teachers about their work. The overemphasis on testing and test scores does not lend itself to creative teaching or creative learning because everyone is so worried about the scores.    

Small schools is a way to go; it is not a new idea, this has been bantered around the District for years, but we have never really created the political will to do this. Maybe now is the time.