Neighborhood schools

[mike gurnee]

Does anyone still have neighborhood schools? We lost the concept due to an influx of "minorities" at two locations; now have two 5-6th Grade Centers (within sight of each other) and one "Middle School" (actually just grades 7-8). Is there a place where elementary schools are within 1/4 mile of the students?

 

[Cardinal]

Small town America. We have an east side school and a west side school (plus another in the township). There is only one middle school and one high school, though.

 

[BKM]

It depends on where you live. There are neighborhood schools in Fairfield-Suisun and Vacaville districts. But, the high schools require, in some cases, a pretty substantial drive. Although, a lot of kids walk to Vacaville High School (1/4 mile from where I live, which means kids smoking pot in our condo courtyard at lunch )

 

[SW MI Planner]

Small town America.

Yep - the local school distict has 4 elementary schools in the City limits (about 6 sq. miles in size). Then there are two more elementary schools in the townships. There is one middle school and one high school for the district (both in city limits). There are three school districts in the county.

The closest one to us is about 1/4 mile.

 

[kms]

Our neighborhood school is closing after this school year. Ths district built two large elementary schools that will take the place of 3 or 4 smaller schools. Walkers will be a thing of the past.

 

[NHPlanner]

8 Neighborhood Elementary Schools, one middle school, 3 high schools (2 public, one catholic) in my hometown.

 

[H]

Here in Miami-Dade I find that the Magnet School concept wipes out the idea of the neighborhood school. This is when public schools have a certain specialization like language or math or science or arts, etc…. and qualifying kids go to the school that they want to concentrate in whether the school is next door or across the county (it is a large county). I know they have this program in Atlanta as well, and probably many other large cities. What do you all on this post think of this concept? I don’t have kids yet, so I cant make up my mind if this is a good or bad program as far as community is concerned. I grew up in a neighborhood where it seems that every kid went to a different private school (I went public) and I noticed I only “knew” the kids I went to school with. My cousin lived in an area where everyone went to the same neighborhood school and when I went to visit him they seemed to have a lot more fun, everyone knew and played with each other.

I know someone here with 3 kids and they all go to different ends of the county in the morning.

I wonder if anyone has studied the impact this has on a child’s social development creating community? It would be hard to “hang-out” and be friends with kids that live 45 minutes away went you don’t drive and there is poor public transportation.

Mmmmmmmmm????

 

[Chet]

Milwaukee is currently going through a transition back to neighborhood schools, after 30-some years of forced desegregation by "bussing". Its really a fascinating case study. Neighborhoods formed around ethicity. Not just black-white but irish, german, polish etc. Bussing turned that on its ear and Milwaukee began to lose it's white ethnics in a "white flight" to the burbs. The City went through a long slow downward spiral as city property values stagnated due to diished pool of buyers. Many blame bussing squarely for for this. Odd how a mandate aimed at desegregating the community only had the effect of encouraging greater separation of the ethnic groups.

 

[donk]

The schools in my city function as both neighbourhood schools and "regional" schools, it depends on where you live and if you want your kids in french imersion, core french, or core english. There is a school about 2 blocks from my house that lots of kids in my neighbourhood walk to and some kids get bussed to. The HS are strictly regional.

 

[nerudite]

We plan future growth in St. Albert through an overall Master Development Plan process, but really most of the nitty gritty planning happens on the neighbourhood level through the Area Structure Plan process. In our MDP we specify that each neighbourhood needs to be sized to support a neighbourhood school. Here we have three public school systems for a town of about 50,000 people. And it's the City's responsibility to keep track of school needs for each of the districts and to assign school sites. Even though it is sometimes a political nightmare and an onerous task to boot, it has married the school planning process with growth and land use planning very well.

 

[pete-rock]

Chicago's Two-Tiered System

There are plenty of neighborhood schools in Chicago, well within walking distance of the kids who attend them. Their achievement scores and enrollment are declining. There are also plenty of magnet schools here, too, and their achievement scores and enrollment are increasing.

A few of the magnet schools here are among the best academically in the state, at the elementary and high school levels. They are diverse, well-supplied, and generally have the best sports programs. The neighborhood schools are among the worst academically in the state. They are overwhelming black or hispanic (the predominantly black schools are generally undercrowded; the predominantly hispanic schools are generally overcrowded), they struggle with obtaining adequate supplies, and they have a difficult time fielding teams for sports.

Much of the academic turnaround in the Chicago Public Schools has come from the establishment of magnet schools throughout the city. This has come at the expense of the neighborhood schools, and even many of the Catholic schools in the city.

 

[jordanb]

If you can find the movie Cheaters, it's a great critique of the two-tiered system in Chicago.

 

[biscuit]

The two tiered system works at keeping middle and upper-middle class kids in the public schools but seems to come at the expense of the neighborhood and community schools. I remember that while I was living in Charleston that the districts Academic Magnet School was ranked as second best in the state (#1 was the resident Govenor's School)while the high school ranked worst in the state was in the same district. The disparity between the two verged on obscene.

 

[Zoning Goddess]

Our elementary school is within biking/walking distance of most of the students. Our next door neighbor's son rides there in under 3 minutes.

My son is in a local private school, but he hasn't had a problem making friends. His best bud is the one next door who's in public school, and has two other close friends from private school within just a few blocks.

 

[mike gurnee]

We do the "magnet" thingy up to grade 4. It apparently is a way around desegregation mandates, giving the students a "choice" of schools. But it doesn't work. You can live next door to a school, and be told there are no openings...thus driving three miles to another. Even if it did supposedly work, what first grader knows he/she wants a fine arts or science school. Hell, my senior in college isn't sure what to major in yet.

 

[jresta]

Collingswood, NJ - pop. 14,500
has 5 neighborhood schools k-5 that all the kids walk to (there are no buses) and all the kids go home for lunch (unless they brown bag) as none of the schools have a kitchen.

All the kids also walk to the middle and high schools located in the center of town. As well as kids from the two neighboring towns - Oaklyn (pop. 3,500) and Woodlynne (pop. 2,200). Each of those towns have their own elementary schools that all students walk to.