High School Musical Chairs

Monday night, according to each of the area newspapers, the Fayetteville School Board met in workshop formation and apparently informally agreed with the recommendation of Superintendent Bobby New about the best solution for the ever-more-crowded Fayetteville High School. He favors building on to the current facility. He said a second option, building an entirely new and larger high school, was stalled because the most likely buyer of the current campus, the University of Arkansas, wasn’t ready to make an offer.

This debate has been continuing for months. Early on an Option C was considered, but no one brings it up any more, not administrators like New, not School Board members or municipal officials either and not columnists and editorialists.

Option C: Building a second high school while keeping this one. It’s not as if this is a revelation. Until recently, FHS had a sister, West Campus, a half-mile down Sixth Street, that was the vo-tech go-to school. (Then for a few years it was run by the junior college in Bentonville, but this week Northwest Arkansas Community College said it was pulling out of that building.)

Springdale just added a second high school, Har-Ber; Rogers’ second high school, Heritage, will open next fall and Bentonville is a couple of years beyond that.

What are Fayetteville leaders saying? That the city won’t grow comparably? That geography and neighborhood convenience don’t count? Fayetteville is growing everywhere but north; a second school could be set almost anywhere and make either site handier for commuting.

Before the second high school idea was disappeared, cynics said the city worried having two smaller student bodies costing the district top athletic-league status. This does not seem to bother Springdale or Rogers, though each has avid high school football fans. Others wondered about FHS being unable to offer as many college preparatory classes if some teachers were put out to pasture on far West Wedington or far East Huntsville Road. Again, this doesn’t bother the other cities in the area.

The region has a mighty tax base. Sure, growth has slowed because the national economy is cycling down some. But the regions major companies still are very strong, not to mention the invisible major employer, the UA itself. Think the gene pool that comprises the progeny of UA faculty and staff will be diluted? Don’t be deluded.

What’s needed is Option D. With the popularity of adding ninth-graders to (senior) high school level, mentioned in the articles above, Fayetteville should jump ahead with three high schools, each serving grades eight through 12. The idea is to obliterate junior high and middle school altogether. Seventh-graders will get the justice long denied them by being monarchs of elementary school. The middle-junior buildings will house the additional elementary schools. Without intermediary campuses, the trauma of eighth and ninth grades will disappear into the anonymity of senior high school.

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