Anybody else's high school like this?

What you said there is true about EVERY major and even smaller cities in the country that are not in the Northeast. Some of the best high schools in the country are found in suburbia around Dallas, Chicago, Columbus, OH, Toledo, OH, Cleveland, OH, Cincinnati, OH, Louisville, KY, Nashville, Atlanta, St. Louis, San Jose, San Francisco, Indianapolis, St. Paul, MN, and on and on and on.

The Northeast has a LOT of people who live there, and in general, the public schools there suck hard, so private schools are a viable option for a lot of people. The problem is that too many people in other parts of the country think private schools in their area are better than the public ones too, and that's just not the case. Public school teachers in most of the country get paid more so the better ones go to public schools, the schools have more resources, etc. People who know, know (like me).

Yep...Mason School District, Upper Arlington, Worthington, Perrysburg, Ottawa Hills, Shaker Heights, Solon, Sycamore, Dublin, Beachwood, Hudson, Rocky River, New Albany, and on and on and on in Ohio and other states. In the Midwest especially, there are great public schools, and private school in general are for religious bigots.

Being a public school in a nice suburb is the key thing though. If you have free-lunch students at school, the academic quality will go down massively.

"I'd like to know Flagpole's opinion on this topic."

-No one

This will serve as my 2nd upvote for this comment.

You lost me here. I can speak for the Indianapolis area as I live here. Outside of the rich suburbs (Carmel, Zionsville, Fishers), the public schools aren't very good. IPS is a train wreck. Most folks with money in Indianapolis would prefer to send their kids to private school. It has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with math and reading proficiencies being at like 20% in the city.

These mega high schools are able to operate like Carmel because mega high schools are much more cost effective to operate than 5-6 smaller high schools and just about every activity has massive parent and community support, which means huge dollars from fundraisers.

There was a big kerfuffle over my city's school district's magnet program. School board members who represented the poorest parts of the city wanted to get rid of the magnet program because some of the magnet schools got more money and white people would flock to the magnet programs instead of attending their zoned schools. I was part of a group that opposed the changes. We got records showing how much funding every school in the district got. There were definitely magnet schools that got a decent bump in funding. But when you looked at per student funding, a lot of the worst of the worst schools in the low income areas had the highest per student funding because the school population at these schools was really low compared to building capacity (which was also very low because most of the schools were built in the 1920 or in the 1970s). So, you would have a middle school with a building capacity of 850 that only had 330 students. But if you ever said the "c" word (consolidation, you sick pigs), people would be in the streets with banners saying "don't close Black and Brown schools!!!"

By contrast, in the burbs, the schools are all huge. My wife is an SLP at an elementary school in a suburban district that has over 110,000 students. Her school has 800 kids, which is huge for an elementary school. But when you pack in lots of kids, the fixed ops costs are much more efficient. The cost of food prep, HVAC, light bill, etc. is way lower per student when you can fill a nice new energy efficient building with kids. Then, the fundraising can be off the charts. One of the marching bands in my area had a raffle where the top prize was a house. They got a local builder and hardware chain to donate all the materials and a bunch of the subs donated their time to build it. The raffle brought in over $500k and paid for a new 18 wheeler for all the marching band equipment. Below is a video of Carmel's marching band. They are one of the best in the US.

I wouldn't mind his opinion, if it was at least based in fact.

I would wager that he went to public school and sent his kids (if he is old enough to have any) to public school. A lot of people are envious (for whatever absurd reason) of private school students and/or parents. It's just a choice of where to send your kids. Nothing else. Making these sweeping generalizations about public and private schools he knows nothing about makes him seem to be one of these envious folk.

NOW we get to the real reason for his hatred of private schools.

Idiot spotted.

Carmel is a pretty rich area. Lots of $1M homes. The reason the school is good is that the families who send their kids there value education and expect their kids to perform. Socio-economic rungs on the ladder are very sticky, education is only one factor in social mobility. Its not spending per pupil that makes a school good. The rest is the quality of your social network and the values you take on as important. If you go to a school like that your peer group probably has pretty highly achieving parents and you will encounter people who have had success in their lives. With that said that is a horrible school for the kids in the middle. As others have said if you are not top of class athletically or academically you will be under developed and lost in the pack. There are probably 50 D1 level athletes per class there who get cut as freshman and never get a chance to reach their potential. If people want exceptional education for their kids they should not buy into a neighborhood with good schools and high house prices, they should keep their housing cheap and spend the money on good private schools which are always going to be better than a place like Carmel.

I've lived and worked in Carmel since 1996. The place has really changed, mostly for the better. Used to be nothing to do at night but now there's tons of stuff going on. I think the population was 30k when I moved here and it's now north of 100,000.

Continual growth, attracting business, and increasing density have helped to keep taxes low. The city has a ton of debt, and there's a sense that if growth slowed, it may be hard to keep those rates low. Indiana allows local schools to add additional percentages to the tax rate if the public agrees to do so, we vote on those during elections. The schools have had several ballot initiatives approved and so are able to gain more tax dollars from the public than some other local communities would be able to do.

The city center has grown incredibly in the last decade or so. Single story buildings are coming down all over and being replaced by five story buildings. This allows the city to extract far more tax dollars per parcel than before -- imagine more property tax due to a much higher valuation, plus sales tax/business tax from 1st floor businesses.

I never expected to live in Indiana this long (I'm not from here), but this really a good place to live.

I wish my college was in Carmel. Instead, it’s located in a ghetto town where students are mugged on occasion, and it’s not safe to walk off campus (where the bars are) at night except in a very specific area.

Everyone I know from Carmel likes it though. Safe, clean, and still improving.

"17.9% of the students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...(Indiana)

It’s 10% according to Niche.

South Bend? I know a few people who went there and they think the same thing - they liked their college and the "college experience" but thought it was a ghetto sh!thole.

I went to high school in a wealthy suburb North of Chicago. We were poor, but a wealthy aunt and grandfather came to the rescue and bought us a house in the town.

My graduating class was 605 students. 599 went to college. They listed all the college announcements in the school newspaper. There was no cafeteria, just a lunch room with milk machines.

it was far more competitive than my college.

I went to Carmel and graduated in the last 5 years. It's a great school, but classes on occasion are large and it's very competitive so it's difficult to stand out if you're not at the top.

There were some (typically more progressive) students who had said the school was racist and/or homophobic, but I digress. I had a few friends who were people of color (although they were mainly upper-middle class Asians) who didn't think it was racist, but they tended to be more conservative; I came out sometime during my junior year and never faced any discrimination.

Yes, it's time to bring equity to black Americans!