The Coruscant of High Schools

[quasigeostrophy]

My sister works at the high school where we graduated. It was a large suburban Indy high school with a student enrollment of around 2500 when I graduated in 1984 (which reminds me, I find it odd I have not yet heard anything about a 20-year reunion - but I digress). Some who went to much smaller schools (such as computerchix) had a hard time grasping the concept that, when we sat alphabetical at commencement, I'd never seen nor heard of the people on either side of me before. Anyway, in the years since graduation, the school has added on and remodeled a number of times. When I was there we were given maps of the floor plan to help find our way around between classes. Yesterday, my sister provided me with the current map. It is now so vast (and she says they are working on it again) it qualifies as the largest high school in the country under one roof. I expect it will soon start to possess its own gravity, or at least completely fill the entire square mile between the major streets that encompass the property. Perhaps they should just put up a big dome, like in Logan's Run. Reminds me of something else, too. :-) I don't know why they didn't make the same decision a couple of other suburban districts here have made - splitting into more than one high school. Different costs, I suppose.

Comments

[queensheba.livejournal.com]

North Central?

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Nope, Warren Central. Close, but no cigar. :-)

[karenthecroccy.livejournal.com]

Heh. I guess I should mention that I knew a little bit about every single person in my graduating class. We only had 80 girls. The classes behind us had upwards of 120 or 130 and that was a huge class! People sometimes find that weird until I tell them that it was an private all girls Catholic flavored school.

My brother went to one of the public schools in "America's Safest City" (Amherst, a suburb of Bflo) and had he graduated with his class, they'd easily triple the amount of kids in my class.

It seems that the schools in and around Buffalo are so numerous, the class sizes aren't *that* big, though. As our population declines, they close a bunch of the city schools and expand on the suburban schools. We have a slight problem with suburban sprawl here.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

I graduated in a class of 21. I was second in my class, and not in the top 10%. There were less than 100 kids in the school when I graduated. My brother, who graduated 3 years before I did, was in a class of 7. That's why Dan's graduating class blows my mind.

I went to a private co-ed Lutheran high school, so I know where you're coming from :-)

[karenthecroccy.livejournal.com]

Yikes! :)

In a class that small, did you guys wind up feeling like a family or were there nasty little cliques and such?

I only socialized with maybe 20% of my class. The rest were society bitches from hell :)

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

Oh, there were all kinds of cliques. And, depending on the phase of the moon and the alignment of the planets, I was included and excluded on a regular basis. I was generally part of a group of 2-3 people who were treated like that.

Lots of backstabbing and bitchness, all four years. Left deep scars, which is why I don't tolerate it as an adult. And it's astounding to me the number of "adults" who still behave this way. Hmmm, isn't most LJ Drama (tm) based on that? :-)

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

My graduating class was ~680. The one in 1985 (the following year) was ~830, and I think it just kept going up. Actual individual classes' sizes weren't bad when I was there, though - around 20-25 students per teacher per class period. I have no idea how that ratio is now, though.

[karenthecroccy.livejournal.com]

680!?!?

Eeeek.

[futabachan.livejournal.com]

Yow. When I was at Deerfield, the size of the whole school was 550. They've increased it to 600 with coeducation, but yow. My graduating class numbered 161.

Area-wise, though, I'd bet that the Deerfield campus is much larger, though. The last time I was on campus, it struck me that just the gym complex is larger than many public high schools....

[gasslight.livejournal.com]

I graduated from Amherst in 1984. Here in Lockport, we have a bunch of elementary schools, 2 middle schools and one highschool.