Monday, October 31, 2011

Bossier School Board considering consolidating Bossier, Benton & Airline

For the moment I am going to ignore the upcoming November 19th general election.  Don't worry, I'll be back to it tomorrow.
We have known that the Bossier Parish School Board would be coming up with a proposition by the end of the year.  Teacher pay is one thing that is being discussed, and I think people would approve teachers' raises.
More controversial, however, is talk about combining Bossier High School, Airline High School and Benton High School into a single school somewhere north of I-220.
As I understand it, some of the Bossier High kids would go to Parkway, but the rest, along with Airline and Benton students, would go to the new high school.
This may look great on paper, and may (or may not) be economically feasible. 
My personal opinion is that this one will be dead in the water if they do propose it.  Simply put, Airline folks and Benton folks will never go along with it. 

16 comments:

  1. Teacher pay is always discussed.

    At what point do they discuss firing the teachers who perform poorly? Otherwise you're simply paying more money for the same bad product.

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  2. So what will they do with the 3 unused schools after building a SUPERSCHOOL. Why would you combine a 5A school and a 4A and 3A school. STUPUDITY, thats why. We have funded enough schools. They just need to borrow some money to cover their overspending and debt to the general fund that was short 7 million this year. This aint for the little chirren, this is for the BIG Chirren on the school board.

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  3. Why on earth would you close down 2 schools that we have recently spent millions to repair or upgrade only to spend tens of millions on another new school. Are the folks on the school board taking cues from the Bossier City Council? Surely they're privy to the disaster that the Webster Parish School System is now. If there are budget shortfalls, than surely we can find more creative ways to make it work than closing 2 community facilities, spending the millions upon millions it would take to build this super school, and then the millions more it would take to bus all these students at $3-4/gallon. I would sooner pay a cent or two more in sales tax or a few more dollars in property taxes to keep what we have than waste those dollars on such a ill thought-out plan.

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  4. This has been discussed before when I was in high school 20 years ago. It went no where then and it will go nowhere now. They were going to shut Bossier High and move BPCC to that location but it never happened. And your right Jim, Airline and Benton people will never go for this.

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  5. Jim, do you have a source for this that I could follow up? I would like to see the credibility of this before I go telling people that there is soon to be a superschool in bossier parish.

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  6. KTBS already reported on this, saying that the rumors are not true.

    http://www.ktbs.com/education/29642955/detail.html

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  7. I think I'll hide and watch. It was being seriously discussed. It could be that common sense prevailed, but then it is the school board we're talking about . .

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  8. Jim, several years ago when closing down BHS and using the campus for other purposes was discussed, I was really all for it.

    Even as a BHS grad, I figured it would be a sensible thing to do...send some kids to Airline...some to Parkway, etc. But, it didn't happen.

    I don't know if there is much support to do what you're talking about, but it really wouldn't bother me, even as an old BHS guy.

    Just as long as they don't merge us with Haughton, it'll be fine. :)

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  9. They would have to build one helluva football stadium.

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  10. This is a terrible idea and I hope that it is nothing to it. As a former teacher, I agree with Anon at 3:18 that bad teachers should be fired. We could do this by having good adminstrators who are willing to get rid of those bad teachers before they have tenure. To do this we must have good adminstrators who are promoted because they deserve it not because they are related to someone in power or are political.

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  11. 8:30,
    Good luck on that. Getting promoted or elected because of who you are and not what you've done is the Bossier way. So get use to it.

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  12. This will NEVER happen because of athletics. Too many kids would be competing for a limited number of positions, especially starting positions. There are too many parents with big money that pull the strings in Bossier, and they will do whatever is necessary to make sure their "little Johnny or Nancy" is playing. Talking about a culture war like you have never seen!

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  13. Someone explain to this dumb country boy why it would be an advantage to have 30-40 kids in each class instead of 15-20. The teachers would be overloaded with grading papers and other things that will keep them up late at night. The school board has lost it's minds.

    Smaller classes, not larger ones equals more one on one! Bunch of morons!

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  14. Bill R.

    They already have 30 to 40 kids in class.

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  15. I don't know about forty. The largest class I've seen had 35 kids.

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  16. Before everyone starts going crazy about the size of classes there are laws that mandate teacher to student ratio. So the idea of there being 40 students in a class is impossible. Not to mention bigger school means more classrooms which equals more teachers. However I am not saying I support the construction of a mega school. Just wanted make a statement about class sizes.

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