New High Schools Being Built

[Chicago]

Lincoln-Way East (top ten or so USA Today for much of last year) and Lincoln-Way Central are being joined next year by Lincoln-Way North and the year after that by Lincon-Way West.

Enrollments will go from around 4000 to around 2000.

I can't see that helping the football teams.

From what I've read, in Texas there is often resistance to doing this sort of thing because it dilutes the football talent.

[Bordertown]

Yes in some communities. Personally I do not think the mega-schools are in the best interest of the kids. Part of the maturing process is learning to be part of a team. I think kids opt out of athletics early because of the numbers and it is not just fooball. In basketball, only 12 kids are going to sit on the bench, in baseball maybe 20, soccer 18, tennis 20 (boys & girls), golf 24 (B&G), the band 250, math team 5, etc .......... It does not allow kids to get involved. I think 1500 to 2000 (coed) is an optimum size.

[Chicago]

I agree with that.

[Chicago]

Having mega-schools can certainly hurt the big-but-not-huge schools (as happens in Texas, I think).

It's like in wrestling, where the weights are 150, 158, 165, etc., or whatever it is, and the heaviest is 220+, and some guy weighing 287 shows up. It doesn't mean he'll win, but he'll have a big weight advantage.

Classifications end up being something like 250-499, 500-799, 800-1499, and 1500+, and then some school with 4000 students is in with schools with 1600 students.

[Chicago]

Lincon-Way split into East and Central only in 1999 or so, by the way.

The district is growing mighty fast.

[FormerWildcat]

Several communities around Columbus could easily have had 4,000+ student high schools if they had not split. The ones I could count off the top of my head are Westerville, Dublin, Hilliard, Worthington, Pickerington, and Grove City. Westerville & Dublin have three high schools now, and Hilliard will join them in a couple of years.

There are several 4,000+ student high schools in suburban Atlanta, and Warren Central in Indianapolis has just shy of 4,000. It's almost treated as "normal" down in some parts of Atlanta. Heck, that is larger than the enrollment of my collegiate alma mater.

[Bordertown]

Plano ISD is the king of the mega schools in Texas with 3 schools, Plano East has an enrollment of 5562, Plano 5122, and Plano West 4156. However before you image junior college campuses, the schools listed above are Senior High Schools (juniors & Seniors). The district has 5 high schools (freshman & sophmores) whose counts are included in the above numbers.

Frisco, the school district directly north of Plano has been experiencing rapid growth. In 1999 the district had one high school which was classified as a Texas 3A school (say 900 students). Today eight years later the district has two 4A schools and a 3A school with a combined enrollment of about 4,000 students. In addition they opened a fourth school this year which will compete JV only. The district passed a bond election in 2006 for building 3 more high schools. In 8 years the district has grown five fold.

[MA Fan]

Yeah, lots of growth in the SW suburbs of Chicago, in 2000 Plainfield had one HS with about 2,000 kids, now they have three schools with about 7,300 kids.

NW burbs too...check out the enrollment history at Huntley:

http://www.schooldigger.com/go/IL/schools/1983002247/school.aspx