okay what do you think about the school systems
uh well
where i live in Plano one of their big things that they hype it within the community is their school system
uh-huh
right
and uh in fact i think that there's some areas of of Dallas and Richardson that are in the those city town city limits but they uh
all of the the housing developments adjoining Plano are in the Plano school district and they use that as one of the things that they
uh you know that they try to market when they sell homes in that area the fact that it is in Plano schools
uh i do have children in that school system uh
and have been personally pleased with that uh i'm not sure that it's that that there's that much glory in the Plano schools versus say Richardson and some of the other areas
okay
uh
what do you see as being a problem with the school system
uh
probably the biggest controversy within our school system
is the use of the open classroom concept
uh where uh
all uh all the students at a given grade level are in one large area for much of the day uh segregated you know by teacher but not necessarily having walls between the classrooms
uh-huh
uh i've now had two children that are have been in the system in the system
uh one who seemed to do just fine in that tap type of atmosphere the other i'm not so sure about because of uh his attention span i think he's a little bit more easily distracted than was she
oh
and that seems to be the primary complaint uh
i think my biggest complaint problem with the Plano schools right now is that many of the schools do not have cafeterias and kids have to take their lunch back to their classroom to eat
uh rather than giving them a a break from that area during the day
uh-huh
uh and
uh
that's i guess i'm a fairly satisfied uh parent as far as the school system goes myself uh
that
that it really boils down to the quality of the teachers
uh-huh
uh and their interest uh in the students individually is going to make the difference versus you know physical things such as the open classroom versus a more closed classroom
uh what do you see as problems
yeah
well i don't have children in school and it's been so long since i was in school myself i'm not really sure how to answer that
yeah
when uh i don't know it seems that they're you know that that the difference is between each school i think if it was
if it could possibly be standardized a little bit that it would be much easier to to gauge you know how uh a particular group of students was doing
right
uh the curriculums differ so much and i'm not saying that that's bad necessarily but i think it makes very hard to tell where an actual problem is
uh-huh
you know you can't really tell from a group of students if it's a if if it's the the teacher that's got the problem or if it's the book that's got the problem you know what the materials that they're using and everything
right
that could be causing a problem
now in in Dallas i know at least at some of the later grade levels they have these magnet schools that i think were initially set up to address the segregation issues
uh-huh
uh and i wondered uh what the real overall effect on education is of those uh i know i have a niece in the Dallas system that
is a uh was just elected to go or selected whatever i i think you have to apply and be accepted to these magnet schools but she's interested in the arts and in in particular in dance
what kind of school is that
uh they call it a magnet school where it attracts kids of certain interest
oh okay
and uh she will be attending i think Skyline Arts Magnet uh or arts and
something magnet school uh next year when she enters high school
yeah i think that's kind of a good idea because
you know it doesn't it doesn't
it doesn't divide people by
by anything besides what they're interests are
yeah
and it's a much higher it's a learning environment if you're group if you're interested in sciences and you're grouped with other people that are interested in sciences
uh-huh
it seems like it would it would uh it would help
now i would think that would would be a good point as well
yeah
they they don't have that type of thing in Plano they just have these two gargantuan high schools
uh-huh
uh but i do think they do provide some type of special interest focus i think the later years uh for for students
okay
what do you think about about sports in high school and about uh the competitiveness
i've i've know i've seen in Plano that there's a lot of really vicious competitiveness between the children at the different high schools
well
and do you think that's healthy
oh not really uh i've not been that aware of it
uh-huh
uh i live on it is somewhat divided by east and west Plano with Central Expressway down the middle
yeah
uh-huh
uh and i am on the west side but just barely on the west side i guess my kids are younger than that
and in they're in the non competitive uh just athletics uh organizations you know your typical soccer and baseball and all that sort of stuff
oh yeah
uh-huh
and because of where we live uh the teams that my son has been on has have been from both sides of the fence if you will
oh okay
they've drawn from both sides and i really haven't sensed any of that yet i it may become more obvious to me in later on
uh-huh
i think the one of the more interesting things in Plano is that they have high schools and senior high schools
which a lot of people don't realize that
that ninth and tenth grade go to high schools of which there there are quite a few in Plano and the senior high schools are only the eleventh and twelfth grade
uh-huh
now i didn't even realize that at all
yeah that's was very different uh they have middle school sixth seventh and eighth
um
right
and then they'll have uh fact they have a couple of huge schools that are actually almost all
middle school and elementary school all of those grades in one building
huh
but uh
well i know they've got a lot of elementary schools
for the most part
yeah bunch of elementary and they typically feed certain middle schools for sixth seventh and eighth and then there a number at least i could probably think of six
high schools
well now what is Shepton going to be
Shepton is a high school
okay
ninth and tenth
okay
and uh there's Shepton and Vines and Wilson or Williams and there's Clark and
i don't know whether there's more than four i want to say that there are more than just four but uh it's just ninth and tenth grade and then the the two senior high schools are just eleventh and twelfth graders
um
which is a sort of a different concept
yeah that does seem kind of different
and they're they're just so big i'm a little bothered by that uh just the sheer
