An Attempt to Inform On A Reply

So, my post on the Broken Arrow school split was seen by a lot of people, and obviously, not everyone agreed. Interestingly, however, a lot of feedback has resulted from people whose response was uninformed and unresearched. I intended to do a longer post, but this one came through Facebook, and I thought I'd address it.

"George. Unfortunately what you think and the politics that play out.  Broken Arrow needs at least 2 high schools and possibly 3.  I personally among others within the school system tend to agree.  Split the schools up including Pride.  The system is TOO large and needs to be split up so it will give the others fair share of making the Pride.  Two Pride in Broken Arrow is not a BAD thing.  Let's face it, Broken Arrow is too BIG for one High School.  I'm not the only one that feels this way!!

Never have been a fan of yours even when you worked at US Cellular.  To me you were nothing but a trouble maker and I still see this as true.  You sir are NOT a team player.  You want to create havoc among thE TEAM and others that I know tend to agree.  I personally hope that BA is split up in ALL areas including PRIDE."

Part of me gets that this is a bit personal. I am, shall we say, in with a large group of people who do not want to see the schools split. Hence, I am standing with my "team" and assisting them. I admit to being a bit of a troublemaker, but in this case, I have a cause that I am standing up for, and I believe this is the right way to go.

Are there a fair number of people for the split? Oh yes. Plenty. The problem is that many of those opinions ring similar to this one. It isn't a bad thing. More bands are good. The high school is too big. The city can support more than one. In principle, these opinions are not wrong, but we also have to consider the local environment and what we've built so far.

Two Prides? No. It was established right from the start that the Pride as we know it would end. Due to OSSAA regulations, each school would need its own competitive marching band and due to the dilution of talent and smaller base to draw from, the optional extracurricular Pride would need to return to the required presence for all band students. Not everyone wants to be in marching band and enjoy the option. Additionally, they indicated that since it would be required, they would have trouble asking for the presently high fees associated with being in Pride. A reduction in cost is a reduction in everything, and some of the national competitions or traveling they do now would be cut down considerably. When it was required in my time, OBA was pretty much the end of our season with a "big trip" every other year.

The system is too large? That is a matter of perspective. We're actually comparable to Union and Jenks in our high school size. And when it comes to Broken Arrow's size, that matters less than the number of students at the campus. We hurt ourselves considerably when we added in the sophomores to the population and made a large campus overwhelming. We have also established, however, how many students it can hold, so pulling those sophomores back out would leave plenty of growth room.

And there's that "fair share" argument. By having more of the same thing, somehow that gives more students more opportunities. Knowing that the Pride as it is with all of its present opportunities will be gone, that will actually be one less thing available to the students. We also know that there are many, many activities possible at a large high school that a smaller one cannot support, both extracurricular and academic. We have specialty classes for students that help them learn in their desired future fields. One of our favorites to mention is an AP Physics 2 class that has 8 students. It used to have 12 before 4 dropped at semester. It's that hard. That class would not survive a split because it wouldn't have enough people. There is also only one AP Physics teacher. Would the class be limited to only one campus? Would only half the district get AP Physics? Would they have to hire a second special teacher for that with the money we don't have for that purpose? A split would be a really, really expensive endeavor which is bad in the current economic climate for schools.

I am formulating a much larger post addressing a lot of the pro-split opinions I've heard in the past couple of months. This thing isn't dead yet, but I do hope some serious discussion is going to to make the best choice for OUR district. Large high schools work, and they work well. They're all over the country in populations larger than ours, so there's plenty of precedents.

About Voting

Elections are a thing in the United States and in many other places in the world, but it seems that when voting comes around, there is a minor misconception people get when doubling down to make that decision. Major parties warn you not to "throw away your vote" or in the case of the last presidential election "cast a protest vote." Neither of these is actually possible.

When one votes for something, the intention is that they engage in a conscious decision to put forth their voice to say which of the available choices they think are best. There is, in fact, no way for anyone to throw away their vote (or make a protest vote). Any vote put forth in good faith to make a decision in one's own best interest is a valid decision...whether that decision turns out to be the winning one or not.

My impression of some people is that when they enter into a voting situation, they get caught up in a game mentality. In the musical, Hamilton, some secondary characters are pondering who to vote for in the election of 1800: Adams, Jefferson, or Burr. When Adams is considered, the comment is made "He's gonna lose, that's just defeatist." This comment is right in line ith the idea that voting for someone who can't win is throwing your vote away. The idea of an election or vote of any kind is to determine the desires of the people, not for the people to play a game to guess who is going to win. Sometimes, you'll even hear about those who guessed wrong later. They'll say they voted wrong because their angle lost.

That's not why you vote. There is no prize for picking the winner. Unless you put money on it, but the legality of that is questionable in some areas.

The point of this is that when you vote, you are supposed to go in with the mindset to always make the outcome better, and even if that entails putting your voice behind something you think may lose, that's fine. If you believed in it, you did the right thing.

If everyone in the country stopped guessing the winner and started voting their heart, maybe we'd start making some positive progress.