I don’t have a dog in this hunt so have only been occasionally splitting infinitives — no — have been reading about high-level discussions on whether Fayetteville needs a second high school. Having studied this morning’s account of a committee meeting, I realize that I wasn’t up on this because it’s impossible to follow. Try this article instead, if you like.
As an outsider (remember, no dog; we’re childless, and, besides, our property taxes are paid through the mortgage so it’s just so much well-hidden algebra each month) I would think this is simply a matter of population growth. At some point the city will be so large that for geographic and other common-sense reasons, a second high school would become practical, even inevitable.
No opposition makes sense. Oh, there is one strong point made early on. The various Fayetteville Bulldog teams would lose their major-league high-school status, so instead of playing Fort Smith or Little Rock teams they might be in conference with Farmington or Gravette. But FHS and FHS II would have superlative teaching and ideal resources being smaller. Springdale is smaller than Fayetteville and just added a second high school.
Growth and athletics aren’t it at all. This committee, whose work was reported this morning, wants to keep a single campus but add the ninth-graders to it. To keep it from feeling intimidatingly big, “the students [would] be divided among internal communities in a manner so the school ‘feels small.'” The current set-up south of the UA and adjacent to the several major highways cannot handle an entire additional grade level — the building is at near-capacity with just under 2,000 students — so a whole new high school set on some acreage in another part of the city makes more sense.
What sense? To whom?
Naively, this solution would seem to be temporary, until the population reaches a further ceiling necessitating finally a second high school. Expansion is not only inevitable but desirable to many — Northwest Arkansas has been among the fastest-growing regions in the whole nation. We are to be as big as China by 2025.
In economically competitive China, even panda bears go to school. They can add this up and see Fayetteville’s dogs can’t count. -30-
