Broken Arrow Split Would Dissolve Pride Marching Band

A plan was presented to us in Broken Arrow in March 2017 to deal with the current population growth in the school system by using both the current high school campus and the freshman academy campus as full 9-12 high schools. It was a plan so overwrought with problems and unanswered questions that the district indicated that they were going to slow down, form committees, and answer questions before deciding on any proposal. Our hope is that the proposal died that day and something new will come up. We're not 100% certain of this, and as such, I wish to post about the scariest aspect of the plan: the dissolution of the biggest national and international celebrity in Broken Arrow, the Pride of Broken Arrow marching band.

I know it seems odd that a marching band would be a celebrity, and like a prophet in his hometown, Broken Arrow doesn't give it much thought, but outside of our town, it's renowned. The majority of the town has no idea what they have. When it comes to its loss, the military would refer to it as "collateral damage." Because of Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activity Association rules, the city cannot have a single marching band represent separate high schools, and the directors basically confirmed that if such a plan passed, the Pride of Broken Arrow will be no more.

The reason for this sudden end to the nationally recognized ensemble is that with the dilution of the talent across the city, and the fact that the only way for a school to get an annual sweepstakes award is for that school to excel in both marching and concert band, each school will need to require that every student enrolled in band participate in marching band at each school. Since the marching band will have to move from optional extracurricular back to required, it is felt that asking students to pay the fees currently associated with Pride to be unreasonable, and lower fees mean the big national trips will have to end. Beyond that, the Pride is a very expensive endeavor. We'd need more instruments, drill planning, musical arrangement, color guard instructors, and choreography. A lot goes into a band show. That's twice as much cash that no one has at the moment.

Before delving further into the Pride's importance, I want to deal with this plan a little bit. It has been a couple months since the original plan, and a lot has been spoken of and passed around since then about this and that, so I definitely want to address some of the things I never thought of before along with things that other people have said in favor of the plan.

To most people, the school marching band is not a big deal. In fact, Broken Arrow takes its Pride for granted. To people who were a part of it, it's family. I saw this dissolution as soon as I read the configuration proposal, and I said something. In the beginning of all of this, I was criticized for putting the band ahead of academic success and progress. They said that the town has enough talent to make a great marching band, but the directors indicated that whatever that is won't be the Pride because their mentality is that it should be an opportunity for all students equally and a two school system can't promise that. So someone telling me there will be another band as good is like telling a grieving parent that they can have more children.

This means that a split that has as parts of its intent to provide more opportunities will take away the opportunity that hundreds of band students look forward to every year. Is that a sacrifice we want to make? Is it one we have to make? Beyond that, a large campus offers infinitely more opportunities than a smaller one because more students mean more ideas which translate into more niche areas. So which opportunities have floated to the surface that people really want? Sports. People want their kid to play on a sports team and there are only limited numbers of people who can. Welcome to life. I heard the NFL just did their draft. Thousands desired to have a spot and only a couple hundred were selected. So many people want to play though. Should we split the NFL? If you ask a band student who missed out on All-State because there are limited spots, they'll tell you to get good. Practice your butt off and go for again next year. It's the way life works. Deal with it now.

Some point to school size, but size is a relative thing and big or small is a matter of opinion and perspective. Broken Arrow doesn't have the largest high school in the nation or even our region. Two of our nearest neighbors and competitors are Union and Jenks, both of whom have 10-12 graders in their high school. BA has 3500. Union does too. Jenks was at 3300. This doesn't mean we're big. It means we're comparable.

"But students feel isolated or invisible in a school this size." Students have to make themselves visible. They have to want to do something. They have to step out and decide to do something. No teacher can force a student to get involved, but there is something at that high school for literally everyone if they want to find it. I am a major introvert and I found more than one thing to do while I was there and the population was pushing 2,000 with just juniors and seniors.

"But you don't know everyone's names because we're so big. Don't even know everyone is every class." You know what? I knew the names of the people around me in my classes, not everyone. And this is another example of life. I work in an office with about 200 people. I don't know everyone's name. I know the ones around me and that's about it.

"But the gym is not big enough for pep rallies and other gatherings." Well, the Gym (formerly known as building G) wasn't built for the current population, but there are other ways to manage large populations for things like this. We have the technology to stream it for example to the student union and other places. Some students actually don't care and don't want to go. Why make them?

"What about overcrowding at that high school?" Perspective. My wife and I both attended BAHS and my oldest is there now. We knew how big it was, but it never felt that way from the inside. We had our place. How about putting 9th graders with seniors? My middle child is in 9th grade and while she wouldn't be bothered, she prefers being with her own age group and likes the freshman academy for that reason. Also for that reason, a transition to a 10th-grade academy followed by yet another to the senior high doesn't bother her at all. Maybe we should have asked the kids what they think instead of adults who can't relate and only think we know best.

"But the high school is old and needs work." So is the freshman academy. The former SIHS is actually older than the high school. Both campuses are aging, and the district is working on them. It takes time. Some have given knocked my comment about the high school being a Rolls Royce and point to its many issues. My original thought process in that analogy was noting that comparing the Freshman Academy to the High School was like comparing a three-door hatchback to a Rolls Royce. I was simply saying that the high school was a bigger, better campus and putting high schoolers at the freshman academy would be cheating them out of opportunities.

Then when the frustration really kicks in, people say it should be about academics. You can't let the Pride be more important that academics. Let's talk about academics. First, you can get academics anywhere. People homeschool. There are a wealth of private schools in the area. But you didn't homeschool or put you kids in one of those other places. No, you have them at our high school. Why? Can't afford the other options is a popular choice, but a reason we wanted our kids to be in this school was for the opportunities it afforded. To be very specific, we wanted them to have the chance to be in the Pride. We didn't want Union or anywhere in Tulsa. We wanted Broken Arrow. We went there. We liked it. Besides, academics don't happen out on the campus in the populace. They happen in the classroom. I heard that Broken Arrow's student-teacher ratio was 20:1. Yes, some are higher and some are lower, but that's the curse of averages. That ratio means the academics can happen just fine because those occur between students and teachers. Additionally, both the high school and freshman academy have unused space because we have no teachers to fill the rooms. A split won't change that.

That actually can't be solved locally but at the state level where our current government apparently cares more about their agendas than education but that's another topic entirely. Due to the Oklahoma's inability to manage our money, the student-teacher ratio is going up even down to grade levels where there is classroom space available, but the district can't afford the teachers to fill them.

If Broken Arrow was going to entertain a split, it should have been done years ago before we oriented everything to befit a large scale high school. It's not just the band that would suffer in a split. We have dozens of unique academic opportunities that can only exist in a school with a large population. In our high school, find classes with only one instance or with a single teacher. Classes like that can't survive a split because they require a certain level of interest. Look for clubs that you don't find on every campus. Unusual ones with a low population count. Those also wouldn't survive.

So, in the case of our district, the plan on the table takes two overcrowded campuses and shuffles the students around which gives you ... two overcrowded campuses. The most basic solution is more classrooms and teachers, and I mean more than 10 at each campus. More is under construction now, but until you can alleviate the current overcrowding at each campus, moving students around won't help and certainly is not worth the sacrifice of the Pride.

So let's go back to the Pride. Does the Pride deserve to be considered in a decision that would result in its destruction? Yes. That organization has done more for our community than any of us ever will. The band puts nearly 400 students on the field which is more than any other group. It has the largest parent volunteer organization on campus as well. You may or may not know that schools get a grade for the number of parent volunteer hours logged. The Pride parents log enough hours for the school to get an A rating by themselves. Like the concessions at any high school event? Look who's running it. It's the Pride parents who volunteer their time to serve you concessions at your football and soccer games at the high school and freshman academy stadiums. Behind the scenes of those 400-ish students is a cast of thousands running the show. All out of love for the kids and the program. Does something that important to thousands of people deserve consideration?

Words swirl around in my head when it comes to all of this. Besides progress and sacrifice, I also get legacy and tradition. The band was founded in 1929 and the Pride label was first used in the 70's, I believe. So we've had this high school band for 90 years. To call it a tradition is almost too small a word. It is weaved into the town's very fabric and history, and while I know many things go away over the years in the name of progress, we don't want to lose traditions for the sake of someone's misplaced desire to leave a legacy. If this is passed, the legacy of our board will be that they ended the Pride of Broken Arrow. They consciously voted on a plan knowing the consequence that hundreds of students would lose a life experience that has positively impacted our town and its children for decades.

Dissolving the Pride would be like disowning Kristen Chenoweth, and the Pride is actually more famous. It's not just national. It's international in its fame. Every year tens of thousands of people sit in stadiums, hear the name of Broken Arrow, and they wait to leave the stadium because they know they're going to see something amazing. A speaker at the recent Pride banquet, who was never a member and yet still has Pride gear, was wearing a polo with the Pride logo in places like Columbia and Japan, and he met people who knew us. A guy I work with from Indianapolis told me with considerable pride that his local high school got one of our band directors: Mr. Kaflek. They wanted him because he taught at Broken Arrow. They wanted a piece of the Pride to teach them.

The Pride has hosted a drum Corp competition for several summers now that has brought thousands of people into our town as either part of those ensembles or as spectators who follow them. The Pride has also hosted Oklahoma Bandmaster Association state championships which brings thousands to our town from across the state to watch. The Pride has won this for more than 10 years straight. On the most watched parade in the world this year, the name of Broken Arrow was seen by millions of people because of the Pride. Watch What Happens at football games before and after halftime. People come to watch the band, and then they leave. Seats clear up all over the stadium after halftime. So people pay to go to football games, watch the band, and reveal that's what they came for, not to watch football. How many towns in Oklahoma can boast that some people prefer to watch the local band than the football team? The pride of Broken Arrow is literally one of the best things about Broken Arrow, and you want to end it. Some little town in Oklahoma is recognized across the world because of its marching band. And they want to end it.

Like I said, this is not some apocalyptic doomsday prediction. The directors have already told the students that this would happen if the school splits.

From a first-hand perspective on the impact here, I was in the Pride back in 1991-92 when it was required and we didn't win everything. But we went to Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl parade and marched in the Inauguration parade for Bill Clinton. My sister was in D.C. again for Bush's second inauguration. How many of you did that? The Pride is a unique opportunity for our children that will never happen again in their lives. Ever. The reaction of my 6th grader when informed that by the time she reaches 9th grade, there may not be a pride to try out for? Tears. She has been wanting that since she saw the pride perform as a 4th grader. For almost 3 years, it has been in her plans to tryout at the end of 8th grade, and they want to end it. She cried. We consoled her with the idea that it was just a preliminary recommendation and pray that it will never pass. How many more children like her are out there who want more than anything to be a part of that group. It's a major opportunity that will be gone. How many dreams will be shattered? Do they matter?

So does something need to be done? Sure. But we don't need to split the campus. We don't need multiple high schools. There are a wealth of other problems that can also create but I've talked long enough. What we really need is better management of what we have. If we can't manage this, how are we supposes to handle changing things around? There are bigger high schools in the nation with 4, 5, and even 8,000 students in a physical location. Rather than going right to a split, why not investigate their solutions with a big campus? Carmel, IN is a nationally recognized school for its academics and such and it has the Freshman on campus too, giving them 5,000 students. Universities are massive with tens of thousands of students and they manage as well.

Broken Arrow has something amazing right now. We should never want to lose it now or in the future. "But we're growing" people say. According to the current numbers, we have a peak coming with a class of 1500, but looking over all the numbers, it is unique. They're also 2nd graders. The numbers behind it didn't grow. Could we get bigger? Yes. Do I have a suggestion? Well, we need to ensure we manage our funding correctly and ensure what was promised is done. It's 2017 and according to the schedule, our STEM classrooms for the high school were funded last year. They've decided to hold off on those for now. Yeah, we need more classrooms and they won't build them. The high school campus was built for juniors and seniors and a full campus was pushed to capacity by haphazardly adding in the sophomores. I thought that was a bad idea at the time as well.

To alleviate the stress, rather than a third high school, which was proposed, building a sophomore academy was a very popular notion. This would give the current campus plenty of growth room for the future since we've established how many students it can hold. I would be for reallocating the bond money to make that happen.

Even beyond that and beyond the proposal that was slowed down for the moment, and that we hope will not resurface, the community does not realize the good the Pride does for it. They don't realize that people have come here just to be part of that. Alumni stay here so their kids can be a part of it. People who aren't part of the band know it. The guy in charge of the Rose Parade sent a video message for the banquet looking forward to seeing the Pride again, perhaps, in four years. Little does he know that the current proposal means there won't be a Pride to go in four years. The speaker at the banquet looked forward to seeing the progress of our percussion ensembles in the WGI tournaments in ten years. In ten years, we may not be going. If we told someone outside of our band that our school board was considering something to end the Pride, they would think we lost our minds.

Broken Arrow current has one identity. We are Tigers. Businesses support the singularity of the teams and clubs they like because it is easy. There is only one to support. Splitting us would split the town. We would have to pick a side. Businesses would too. Bond issues would forever have to appeal to both sides or it won't pass. That's what the facilitator we brought in said to someone after one of the meetings. He thought the split was a terrible idea. He's also from a district with a 4000+ population high school.

We need progress, but we need the right kind of progress. The proposal we had was wrong for us in many ways, and we hope to never see it again. There is some suggestion in the wording from the district that we might get it back with some extra explanation showing that they did not listen to us and did what they wanted. We want something that will be beneficial to the most students, not ruin the town, and solve our underlying problem.

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.

A Letter of Thanks to The Broken Arrow Board of Education

Greetings Board of Education,

I want to personally thank you for the worst recommendation in the history of Broken Arrow for reorienting our school district, destroying our economy, and breaking up our town. I know the recommendation came from a Steering Committee and all that, but I'm not so blind to not know that there was not at least a finger or two in it. I also know that the deciding factor comes down to three out of five of you making the decision to move forward or not.

This preliminary recommendation, whether it passes or not, has had a profound effect on this town and its people. It has revealed to us that we have been blind, and we don't want to break up. You have, thus far, enjoyed a relatively quiet existence winning canceled, unopposed elections, but this recommendation has changed everything. You see, it turns out threatening to break up Broken Arrow caused it to get all riled up. Turns out those of us on 51st and those of us on 131st actually still like being neighbors and want to keep doing high school together. Like the Japanese dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor, you have awakened a sleeping giant, and this giant is sorry he's been asleep for so long.

Now, regardless of how you vote and regardless of how this proposal moves forward, what you do is now being watched. We are suddenly very aware of our local government and who is making the decisions for us. We are looking at the bios for every one of you and eagerly awaiting your vote on this issue so we can find out if you deserve to remain where you are or if we need to find someone else to represent us. We will find out where you stand on what matters to us which will tell us how you feel about our community and schools. We will know if you agree with us or not, and if you fail to do as we wish, we will find someone to run against you and vote you out.

You have helped us to realize and remember that we want our community unified more than anything. We've been teaching this across the district for years. Every student is a tiger. We are one school, one faculty, one spirit, one pride, one team, one voice, one tradition, and one community, and you will not take that away from us. If you are not part of our ONE Broken Arrow, then you need to be somewhere else.

This is not a threat, of course. Here is the United States of America, we call it democracy in action. You are only where you are because we have allowed you to be there, however blindly it may have been.

So as you settle into your comfortable chairs to cast your votes on this decision and all that come in the future, be aware that we will know and talk about what you do. And if we don't like it, we will plan to remove you. God bless America.

I am so glad this recommendation came out and forced us to look at our local government and start to take control again. Good job.

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...