BA Gets Punked By School System Recommendation ... We Hope

On March 21, Broken Arrow Public Schools' High School Configuration Study Steering Committee (try saying that five times fast) somehow reached a consensus regarding a recommendation about how to rework the Broken Arrow High School and its population growth. The article (which you can read in its entirety here: BAPS Preliminary Recommendation Article) goes on about two years worth of research and data to reach their recommendation, and to the horror of the community revealed a plan that is the most divisive, dangerous, and economically destructive plan I have ever seen in my life. After I thought, "How are they going to pay for all of that?", I eventually came down to the conclusion that this has to be a joke.

It has to be. There are eighteen people on the steering committee consisting of all ages from high school students to retirees and even the current BAHS principal. How did these people put this plan together and not realize the disastrous implications of it? No one along the way considered any of the ways this could go horribly wrong? Nobody? It's got to be someone's pet project. Got to be. There's just no other way this is real. Maybe I misinterpreted it. Maybe they left out some key words that would change it all. Or maybe it is what it says it is.

Walk with me through the ways this plan can take Broken Arrow from a thriving suburb with an enviable school system to complete ruin. Note that this is my impression of this plan, but I also think that if you come up with something that has even a chance of going this badly, you gotta come up with something else.

And just so you know, I'm a Broken Arrow native. I grew up here. I went to Northeast Elementary (now Rhodes), Sequoyah Middle, North Intermediate, and graduated from Broken Arrow High School. I remember the Sound and Spirit of Broken Arrow marching bands and their rivalry as was a member of the Broken Arrow Pride. I now live in Broken Arrow with my wife and three children who are 6th, 9th, and 12th graders. Moving on...

So first, let's deal with the core of the recommendation. They want to split the current high school campus by leveraging the current Freshman Academy as a second high school. Their idea is to have a max population at the original campus of up to 4,350 students and a population of the Freshman campus of up to 1,950 students. Yeah, that's a lot. There's also an "Options Academy" that isn't thoroughly explained, but it's supposed to have 650 students. This building is currently the "Alternative Academy." I'll let you guess what it's for. Eventually, they plan on adding STEM classes or something and then eventually, eventually add a third high school if the community votes in a $200 million bond in 2027. The number split by that time will be 3250 at campus 1, 2250 at campus 2, and 3250 at campus 3. They refer to these as "comprehensive 9-12 grade high schools."

Here's the problem. Our current high school is what you might call a Rolls Royce of high schools. It is the largest one in the state of Oklahoma and has all kinds of amenities for students to use. The sheer size of it grants programs of unparalleled specialization because you have that many different interests to fuel them. My own child is in a class of eight people because of it specialization. It has twelve but four dropped at semester. You only get that in a student body of this size on a campus of this magnitude.

The Freshman Academy is ... well, not that. Compared to the high school, it's a ... well, 3 door hatchback. One with an engine so small that you can't put an air conditioner on it without burning out the engine and it only comes with a manual 5-speed transmission. No automatic. Engine too small. One of the "great things" about splitting the high school was supposed to be increased opportunities for more students. The theory here is that when you have two schools, you have, say, two football teams and now, more kids can make the teams. Well, the Freshman Academy doesn't have the facilities to support a football team, really. It barely has a stadium. Additionally, when you split the population like that, you dilute the talent base. You have two teams, sure, but they're only half as good. You also lose that specialization I mentioned. all those neat classes you can have with a massive student body? You can't do those in a smaller school because two or three students don't make a class. They won't be offered.

Let us not forget, though, that while this smaller school is attempting to validate itself, the original one is still sitting out there in all its luxurious glory. That means that in this town, you'd have the "good" school and the "bad" school ... well, it isn't bad so much as the one that's not as good as the good one. Kids will pick up on this and hate that they're not going to the high school they were promised in the beginning. They're going to graduate from BAPS, and one of their memories will be that they didn't get to go to the good school. Teenagers are grumpy about school anyway, and we want to encourage this? Well, I suppose that will also decrease the population. Parents will also pick up on this which leads to my next point.

Schools fuel where people live. When looking for a house, realtors always put down which school district the house is in. People want to live where their kids will go to a particular school. To date, living in Broken Arrow Schools meant that you would attend the fabulous Broken Arrow High School and get all that that entails. In the future, realtors will need to notate which BAHS the kid would attend. The good one up north or the other one down south. Given the choice between the Rolls and the hatchback, which would you pick? The Rolls comes with its own driver, by the way...

Yup, you picked the Rolls. Who would live in the zone with the other school? The people who are already there, of course. You know, there is already talk of leaving the district or moving up north by people on the south side if this goes through? Already. And this is "just the preliminary recommendation." Fast forward that a few years, and what do you have? A wasteland of empty houses in south Broken Arrow. The former Indian Springs neighborhood where houses went for hundreds of thousands of dollars now can't sell a single one because the people who can afford those houses can also afford the ones closer to the good school. Businesses dry up and close. I know a business owner who considered opening a restaurant in South BA. He's now waiting to see what happens with this school thing cause he's not willing to build anything if it passes. He knows what's coming. Another friend advised his mother to sell out of her house quickly if it goes through. You know, before the market drops and you lose your equity.

Will this happen? Who knows, but it's not only pretty dark but fairly plausible since people are already talking about doing things that would fuel this scenario. We're pretty scared about it on this end which is why I think this plan has got to be a joke. How could a group of people be so blind to not consider the economic repercussions of a plan that would affect their entire city? This whole thing is fueled by population growth. I don't know. Maybe the plan is to stifle the growth so they don't need that third high school. This certainly looks like an effective way to do it. I really don't know how they could have missed it. I went from plan synopsis to Armageddon in only a few paragraphs. Like I said in the beginning, we're being punked here.

You may note that I listed a bunch of problem adjectives above. Could there be more wrong with this beyond economic ruin? Oh yes. This thing has yet more problems beyond just driving our town to bankruptcy. Another reason this seriously must be a joke.

How about the core problem in above that leads us to this ruin? Unequal schools. This is not how Broken Arrow Public Schools makes such a change. Historically, when the district needs to split a school (at the elementary or middle school levels), it always builds a new school that is superior to the old one. They've always done this. Highland Park and Oneta Ridge are a couple of the newest, I believe, and they are amazing. At least from the outside. I've never been inside, but the exterior looks great. When I see the Freshman Academy, I see South Intermediate High School with a different name. The inside hasn't changed much, I hear, in thirty years. Of course, there have been changes, but it's mostly the same. That's not the way we do things around here. You see, Broken Arrow people are spoiled, demanding, friendly, and unified. We want things a certain way, and the plan doesn't deliver that in the way they've always done it.

Broken Arrow has always resisted a high school split. Always. They were discussing this when I was at the high school in the 90s. We were getting bigger, but the community did not want their school split up. Why? A huge reason is community unity. We are the Broken Arrow Tigers. The whole town is. Every middle school has the Tiger as its mascot. Everyone from all over our city works together for the students because every single person knows that every child in our city, regardless of where they're going to elementary or middle school, will end up together in a single community at the high school. When I was in school, we had a rivalry between North and South Intermediate, but at the end of a band competition when North and South took 1st and 2nd, someone from South came up to me and randomly gave me a hug. She said, "I don't know who you are, man, but I'll see you in the Pride." In that moment, the rivalry melted away, and we were one city. One team. One band. One people. We want to remain one city, and a high school split threatens that one thing we hold most dear. Our unity. We love that we're one. Love it. That aspect is why someone people came here. They don't like towns that are split over their school structure. I love that when I talk about Broken Arrow, I don't have to qualify anything. Broken Arrow is one city. Why would we do something to destroy that unity?

It goes further than that. I mentioned the Pride in my last paragraph. The Pride of Broken Arrow is one of Broken Arrow's most nationally known items after Kristen Chenoweth. The Pride has a member who came to Broken Arrow from Indiana because he wanted to be part of it after seeing them on a national competitive stage. The Pride's shows are unlike any marching band show you've ever seen. Seriously, look them up on YouTube. They have won the National Marching Band Championships with Bands of America three times, but their shows are amazing every time. A bitter school rivalry dissolved with the words, "I don't know who you are, man, but I'll see you in the Pride." People who aren't part of it don't understand that being in the Pride was not about winning. We didn't win OBA my senior year, but it was still amazing. I met my wife in the Pride, so it is part of my life's fabric. The idea that the school planners would throw this and so many other programs away hurts. The Pride isn't the only nationally awarded program in the high school. As we've been discussing this, the list just kept growing from other fine arts programs like Show Choir to Cheerleading to Debate. Broken Arrow is on the map of the world because they are awesome and this awesomeness comes from our unity. Together we can change the world as long as we remain together. Why oh why would you want to ruin that?

I love this town, and I love these schools. I don't think the planning committee knows what they are dealing with even though they have the current principal and a former director of the Pride on it. These elements alone make me think this plan is someone else's. Not a recommendation of the committee so much as the brain child of someone who doesn't understand Broken Arrow or what the high school structure means to us.

So what can we do? There is no denying that the growth of the student population is a legitimate problem that needs a solution. Well, let me share what I initially thought this proposal was giving us. You see, I went in with a positive mindset and real into it what I thought it must be saying before I realized none of these words were in the article.

One proposal for fixing the growth was an Academy or University model. This means that regardless of where you went to a high school campus in Broken Arrow, that campus was part of Broken Arrow High School. All the opportunities and classes from every campus were available to you, as a student. You simply might have to travel to a different campus to take advantage of it. The core of everything would still be at the original campus while satellite campuses primarily housed core and common classes. The multiple locations were their biggest advantage. For instance, there are classes for students at Tulsa Technical College which is only a few miles from the Freshman Academy, but quite a distance from the Senior High. It would be advantageous for a Tech student to attend classes at Tulsa Tech and then only have a few miles to their closest campus for the remainder of their day, even if they have a sports practice of some kind at the main campus later. You see, when I first read the proposal, that is what went through my head because that fits Broken Arrow. We keep our unity, but the student body gets dispersed to convenient locations around town more conducive to their homes. It's a simple solution where everyone wins. No businesses shut down. People don't move away. You end up at the campus that is best for your path while losing none of the grand opportunities the size gives you, and Broken Arrow, as a city, keeps its unity. We continue to support one high school and one set of programs. Third school building? No problem. More student dispersal and growth is supported while maintaining everything we have now. It even follows their timeline.

What they have put before us can be read two ways. One way gives us an answer to a problem in the best way possible to allow unlimited growth while maintaining our city's unity and high school opportunities. The other divides us and brings us to economic ruin. If it's the former, I fully support it. If it is the latter. Seriously, we're being punked.

Addendum 3/29/2017: I posted a link to this blog post on the Broken Arrow Public Schools Facebook page as a comment to a recent post about this topic. They deleted it. So their definition of an "open discussion" only involves opinions they like? Suspicious...