OT: Farmington Hills Harrison in danger of closing?
IMO the major current rift in lower Oakland county seems to be the staunch differences in essentially 'what to specialize in' as a district. My district is one of the last to be a closed district in the area. All districts to the south, east and west are all open enrollment. If you get into our district K-2nd you are often grandfathered in. However, we preach high academics and the arts to death. We (football program) are constantly battling other programs and the band for #s. I feel we are holding our own given our situation. Many top student athletes will not come to us even if they live in district because there are more established athletic programs at our neighboring schools. We (as a district) do absolutely no catering to athletics. But our band will boast 240+ kids.
From a business standpoint we are currently in a solid situation compared to others. But a day is coming where this will likely change. We have our prestigious academic standing for now, but if we were to lose that or the arts who knows what would happen. The whole situation is frustrating on all ends. Rough when you only cater to one type of student.
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I live in the Harrison district; most of the families in our neighborhood send their kids to North already. Harrison's football program is great, but you can move a football program pretty easily. As for a dilapitated building that looks more like a prison...
It was. Walk around the inside, and that's exactly how it's laid out. Really strange building.
I'm guessing that if we took a poll, a large percentage of people reading this site went to a high school that "looks like a prison." And many schools are dilapidated. Any building that's more than 15-20 years old is probably going to look a little dilapidated unless it's constantly maintained by a steady flow of money, which is not in the cards for most schools. Ultimately, kids can still learn in a school that's not a state-of-the-art facility.
I'm not advocating. I'm trying to explain what's going on in my community.
We have half as many kids as when all four schools were built, and one routinely has the air conditioning break down and leaks all the time. We pay out the nose in taxes for school bonds to make sure our schools have a huge flow of money, but we've been falling behind Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills lately even though we all do the bond thing to pay for public schools that equate to private schools. That's because they've downsized. BH went to one high school. Birmingham renovated both schools and sold off a big chunk of Groves (my alma mater) to be a Michigan State satellite. The competition for young families in these burbs is fierce and school quality is #1 on the list. So that's why this is coming up.
Like anywhere in the Midwest there are some poorer and some richer neighborhoods, but on the whole we're talking about a pretty affluent, education-obsessed suburban community that built for the baby boom and has been a bit oversized ever since that ended.
There's a social component, since over time the schools have tended to become somewhat racially and economically segregated. When we do inevitably downsize to three schools, I imagine it will be a good opportunity to undo that.
Bloomfield Hills district has been shrinking for years - especially after the Baby Boomers (like me) all got through there. Andover has been bulldozed and a new combined high school will open up this fall. My old elementary was closed as a public school many years ago. Many of these suburban Detroit districts have gone through this downsizing, especially as local populations have aged and no longer have kids in school. The BH district is relatively well off since the property tax base is still pretty high. But even then, older residents who may be retired are often very reticent about voting for millage increases for expensive new schools.
I don't disagree with the buik of your post here. But I think if you've ever been inside Harrison, you'd see that there are some schools that actually do look like a prison, rather than just feel like one. And Harrison is one of them. Not saying that's a reason to close or replace it, but aesthetically, it's not the most conventional educational building I've ever seen.
I'm not speaking metaphorically. Again, I think a large percentage of people went to high schools that "look like a prison." It is a common comment/complaint I've heard, and I - like many others - have visited lots and lots of high schools. The picture of FHH looks like thousands of other schools across the country.
I've got to agree with the others here. Yes, there are "prison" aspects to other large old school buildings, but it stands out more at Harrison than any other school I can think of. Actually, when my high school went there for a game back in the '90s, the rumor was that it was a former prison.
The same rumor gets brought up about two schools on our current schedule (and neither one is Harrison), not to mention several schools we played when I was in high school. But that's fine. I don't really care that much about how FHH is described.
Well, it actually seems like you do care. And don't really care when people who have actually been to the school in question tell you what it's really like. Hell, most of the building didn't even have windows until a recent renovation.
But, hey. Magnus gonna Magnus.
LOL. The architectural structure of FHH has no bearing on me, my family, etc. I'm just involved in a discussion. I stated something, people have responded, and the discourse continues.
Again, your description (about lack of windows, etc.) is not unique. I'm not talking about FHH itself and saying it doesn't look like a prison. I'm saying lots of other schools look like prisons, too.
I guess this is a point of pride amonst people from the area? Some of you seem to be really entrenched in this idea that FHH is like a prison, and other people (like me) just don't understand how prisony the prison looks like a prison, regardless of whether we have our own experiences with prisony prisons.
So I will walk away from the conversation. Your prison is the prisoniest.
/s
Not in the suburbs. This isn't Detroit Public Schools, this is Farmington Hills, a nice area.
This is what happens when you say no to Jim Harbaugh.
interesting because Harrison is actually the newest school. When my dad went to high school, there was only North Farmington and Farmington.
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I graduated from Farmington High. My parent's house was about mid way between FHS and Harrison and my younger brother was offered the choice of going to either. He was in the first graduating class. When Harrison first opened I can say that it didn't remind anyone of a prison. I would suppose though that it may be showing it's age by now.
FHS represent
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The districts where I attended school (Northville and then Saline) have seen their fair share of changes, but the one where I currently live and where my kids go (Romulus) has seen a lot of tough choices made too. In the eleven years we've lived here, three elementary schools - including the one that would have been the neighborhood school for us - have shut down and the only real infusion it has had in terms of student population / funding is when they took on a portion of the now-defunct Inkster School District. Couple that with the fact that a lot of my neighbors are older families and empty nesters now and it's hard to see this turning around soon.
I grew up in Holland and the area was growing like crazy in the 90s. Zeeleand (next town over) built a brand new school that was too small by the time it was done. My school district built a brand new 8-9 building because we were too large for 4 grades in the HS and now have a brand new HS, with the old HS becoming a second middle school. So two High Schools and two Middle Schools.
As a new parent, trying to pick places to live based on school districts is a lot tougher than I thought it would be.
Several laws have been changed that affect the schools and no one seems to mention those.
1. The law passed giving public funding to private schools for parents who choose to send their kids there.
2. School of choice.
3. The increased number of charter schools compeating for enrollment. (Not sure if a law led to this or not)
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As you seem to be much better informed about the subject than I am. I live in Royal Oak and there are no charter schools here (or nearby) that I'm aware of.
Personally I'm not a huge fan of school choice, but my reasons are entirely selfish. Opening up enrollment to out of district kids has absolutely hurt the academic standings of RO schools. Ten years ago the elementary school down the block (Upton) was in the top 10 statewide, now I'm not sure if it's even in the top 50. ROHS is still in the top 50, but just barely.
The charter schools are taking a few students. But the bigger effect is we built for a temporary population disruption.
In the 1960s, 85% (that's ridiculously high) of Bloomfield Hills homes had school-age children. Today that's under 50%. Those numbers were repeated ad nauseum in the local paper/e-newsletter (Patch) during the merging of their high schools.
Farmington won't be exactly like that--iBloomfield Hills was built almost entirely after the war and immediately filled with vets starting families, whereas Farmington was a thriving farming town for a century before it became a suburb. But that illustrates why, despite the population not being as hard hit as most of Michigan, these districts are still downsizing.
A bit of school funding history: up until I was in college (and Engler was governor) your property taxes went right to the school district. Communities like Ann Arbor, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, and Farmington voluntarily raised their property taxes to create elite schools. The rule itself though ultimately created an effect of really good schools in affluent areas and awful schools in poor areas, which isn't really fair considering the state should be providing a good education to all of its citizenry. So the state pooled everybody's property taxes into the state fund, shifted half of them to prisons, and doled out the rest evenly. In response these communities started passing regular bonds. Every few elections there's a bond issue on the ballot, everybody winks at each other, and we pass it, and that money can't be touched by the state. But it does raise the price of living here, because paying off the "bonds" is effectually a permanently increased property tax. It means if you're planning on sending your kid to private school, you can save money by buying a house in another suburb.
School choice is a politically charged thing that affects everywhere because there are parents who prefer privitized institutions everywhere. I don't think it's a primary effect in this particular case because the #1 reason people live in Farmington in the first place is the public schools. West Bloomfield is right smack in between Farmington Hills and Bloomfield Hills, but WB has relatively crappy (read: "just pretty good") schools, and far lower taxes because they don't pass school bonds.
All of their respective numbers are fairly low, but the my do tap into the overall numbers.
I also agree with other points that the population, and age demographics have changed and have also 'hurt' the schools. The lack of state funding is rough as well. With schools essentially. being forced to accommodate everyone and putting students in the least restrictive environment to learning, costs most certainly rise
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you mentioned are in school districts that have traditionally been substandard. I'll be worried when charter schools start showing up in Birmingham.
As one example, there are a few charter schools within the footprint of the Plymouth/Canton school district, and I wouldn't characterize that district as "substandard."
Coming to a public school near you.
Just remember, it's your child's future that is the first to go with budget cuts.
Not that there aren't problems related to budget cuts, but this is above all an issue of declining enrollment. The U.S. population is simply getting older, as people now marry later and have fewer children than they used to. That is a nationwide trend and holds particularly true for the white population, so if a city is predominantly white it's very likely going to have declining school enrollment even when its population is stable.
It's harder for Farmington to justify having three high schools when its enrollment is considerably lower than it was a generation ago, when they opened.
This is happening in rural cenral michigan also, though its a lot different when your school closes down and your forced to go to a school 20 miles away
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Amen
Unfortunately the charter school train is full steam ahead. They have the money to create the narrative and the general public falls for the talking points.
How do these large school districts and teacher unions control the narrative? They are both practically broken and/or broke. If the teacher union (Or any other union) controlled the narrative, then what happened in Wisconsin would have never taken place. That argument is getting worn out, especially when approximately only 10% of the workforce belong to a union. Update your talking point, though why should you, people actually believe it.
What factors are you using in determining if a school district is performing well?
I'm sorry but I have to laugh at the assertion that Charters put pressure on public schools to improve. If anything, Charter Schools have started a race towards the bottom.
Charter schools are publicly funded, boards are volunteers, and typically operate on 72% of a traditional schools budget. They receive greater autonomy to make decisions for their school in exchange for greater levels of accountability. They typically give families choice where there is none.
They are different entirely from a voucher system.