I'm just curious to get all your opinions on this. I'm not from the area, but I do understand Texas' obsession with high school football. But I think this goes a bit too far. I don't know much about the Allen ISD, except that the high school is massive (my suitemate last year graduated from Allen, he said the graduating class was something like 2,000). But even if the school has vast academic resources and is not starving for money, imagine the amount of good things that could come of investing $60 million in academics. I mean, if you needed a bigger stadium (which they didn't, the old one fit 14K apparently and this one fits 18K), you didn't need to spend $60 million on it. Spending $5 million on a high school field seems absurd to me. I understand that it houses a weight room, indoor golf practice place, etc., but this is HIGH SCHOOL. Did they really need to add a 75 foot HD video board?
I don't know, maybe I'm just a bit bitter. Rhode Island's public education is a joke right now, all the school systems are starving for money and they keep hiring superintendents that command $250K salaries. The school I graduated from was one of the nicer public schools in the state, and one of the largest, but even we struggled to buy new textbooks, especially for AP classes, and hire/retain good teachers. Luckily due to a couple of federal grants we won, we were able to upgrade and expand the campus, which was fantastic, and put in a state of the art music lab.But, the political system in the education dept. was corrupt. They cut trade classes, like woodshop and autoshop. And they're cutting art and music programs throughout the department. Yet they had enough money to give the ALP* kids all iPads. So, maybe I'm just bitter, and unaware of how well the public education system in Texas is actually doing.
Thoughts on this everyone? I guess one other thing to worry about is if other school systems try to follow suit or even outdo this. This could be the opening of a dangerous Pandora's Box.
*ALP: Assisted Learning Program. Essentially this was a group of about 15 kids who were chronic trouble makers that should actually have been removed from the school, but the state had no where to put them, and had to keep them somewhere. So what the school decided to do was create an alternative program for them, where they'd learn in isolation from the rest of the student population, but take Phys. Ed. and lunch with the rest of the students. The program was designed to "help" (cater to) these kids, so they're allowed to have major temper tantrums (throw desks, swear, walk out of class, etc.) without repercussions, because they have "home problems" (note: I live in a nice suburb. they may damn well have home problems but the way they act you'd think they grew up homeless in the Bronx). Essentially, they're allowed to do whatever the hell they want and as long as they do some work, they graduate in 4 years. One of the kids assaulted a dude with a bat last summer, and almost killed him, and was on trial on and off throughout the year, and he's allowed to walk free throughout the school. And yes, these are the kids they decided to buy iPads for, they were allowed to use them as long as they behave well. They bought 15 iPads for these kids, instead of buying new AP textbooks. Great school system, eh?
Edited by UNTstormchaser, 05 August 2012 - 11:05 AM.
