Anybody else's high school like this?

There’s a lot of money in Carmel. It’s a great school district with a lot of high achievers. Mason HS in Ohio is similar and there are similar demographics of the student population.

LOL! My high school was not like this.

And yes, it is good to live in in a wealthier area where school funding is in a major way tied to property taxes!!

Carmel is one of the largest public high schools in the US.

Alan

Tying funding to property taxes doesn't mean sh!t. Baltimore has some of the highest property taxes in the nation but the schools are failing. You also have to take into account that there are more than 5,000 students across just 4 grades.

I went to the best high school in Baltimore, and our campus was slightly bigger (just under 70 acres) and our buildings were modern, but we only had about 1,000 people (and just 500 in the upper school) so we didn't need that much square footage.

Oh, God, they made a part 2! For all the stuff they missed in the first one!

https://www.tiktok.com/@carmeldeca/video/7198270271319493934

I get your point about property taxes not being a panacea for quality of facilities, but the point I was making is that in a wealthier area a school is going to have quite a few more resources. The poverty rate in Baltimore is 24%, in Carmel it is 3%. The national average is 11.6%. The size of the school (students) would also explain having a lot of their facilities, of course.

Agree with you on that. The best public schools are typically in wealthy areas that care about education. Look at Thomas Jefferson HS in Virginia until 2021 - great school with rigorous admissions standards.

I grew up in a town next to Carmel called Zionsville which is also a wealthy area. Definitely, that entire area has lots of money for a midwest city. Compared to coastal cities, it’s not much money, but with everything being fairly affordable there and relatively lots of space, I can see how they are now. It is pretty impressive with what’s available there.

i thought what’s challenging is though that since Carmel High School is so large, everything is very competitive especially sports. Much harder to make teams compared elsewhere. So, it may end some kids’ dreams much earlier than other schools. Or, if you hit your growth spurt late, it may suck that you may get looked over and have to take on other activities. Although, it looks like there are lots of interesting activities you can participate there.

My highschool doesn't look like this, but it's alot smaller.

Honestly, this is what a normal, functional, low-crime, low-corruption, family-oriented, intact community looks like.

There's probably districts with double the funding that look nothing like this

haha absolutely not

mine has 200 students and three hallways

I agree with exactly what you said. For example, this high school spends under $10k per student, and 71% are proficient in math and 89% are proficient in reading. The average SAT score is 1280 and ACT is 30.

However, I'm sure that most families there are married and actually are engaged in their children's lives.

While that is certainly a good and well-funded high school, there are PUBLIC high schools like that in and around most major cities in this country...there are exceptions, but GOOD public schools look like that.

This is why I have long said that public education in this country is BETTER in most cases if you can afford to live in a good area. For some stupid reason, on the East Coast, even in progressive BLUE states, public education isn't as good as it is in other areas of the country (both blue and red states). My guess is that it's just the attitude of the people who live there who just generally believe that private education is better...kind of creates its own destiny there.

In most states, public school teachers are paid more than private school teachers, and the public schools have more resources are are much better.

Carmel is a wealthy area around Indianapolis. You can find similar places in and around Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, Louisville, San Jose, San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, Portland (OR and ME), and on and on and on. Yes, MOST high schools don't look like that because most high schools are not in wealthy areas. Make a professional-level salary, and your kid can go to a high school like that too.

just look at Baltimore (non charter) publics - there are 23 schools where not one student is proficient in math but they spend the 4th most in the US. This isn't even adjusted for cost of living - New York spends a little more, but NYC is a much more expensive city and they actually have (some) good schools even though the former mayor tried destroying them for "equity".

I do think that going to a school of 5000 seems insane though - that's almost as big as most "traditional" top colleges, and it's far bigger than liberal arts colleges. While I read that the school is intentionally so big so the funding isn't split between multiple schools, that's still crazy.

There are almost 5400 students enrolled at Carmel HS. That's one of the reasons that it's so big. 5400 * 10,000 per = $54M per year in funding. The district as a whole has 16,395 students. So that's $164M for the district.

As someone mentioned, high enrollment allows them to dominate in most sports and extracurricular competitions like marching band and show choir. The flip side of that is lots of potential top-performers are not able to crack the starting line up.

Where I'm from, you need to go to a private (or religious) school to get a good education which is painful because property taxes are already so high.

Still, Carmel isn't even wealthy though - it's just a standard middle (to upper-middle) class area.

The kid who introduces the senior hallway is the current Foot Locker / Eastbay / Champs National champ, Kole Mathison

You need to adjust your perspective a bit. Carmel is definitely upper-middle to upper class. Average household income is above the 70th percentile for the US. And 2nd highest household income in Indiana (Zionsville 1st, Fishers 3rd).

Obviously not wealthy compared to places like CA, NY, or coastal cities, but if you think Carmel is middle class, you need to travel more.

I think he/she has travelled so that’s why stating that upper-middle class. When you’re just in the Midwest, it’s really upper class, but as you mentioned and actually traveled to coastal cities, it’s not that rich when coastal cities would have houses that are dumps at $600K where you get a nice house for that price in Carmel. For $1M, you’ll be living in McMansion compared to other areas where it’ll be a shack.

The average income is about $120k. That falls somewhere between middle and upper-middle class.