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High School Crossroads
Finally Fayetteville Made A Decision
Last updated Friday, May 30, 2008 7:00 PM CDT in Columns
By Doug Thompson
Arkansas News Bureau
After more than a year of debate and study by three committees, the Fayetteville School Board decided to do what it was going to do all along.
They're offering the high school to the University of Arkansas for $59 million. There was once some potential for surprise about this. That ended a long time ago, when the university said it wasn't all that interested and the board kept pursuing the deal anyway. Once the university started showing interest again, people knew exactly how this was going to turn out.
I'm not going to debate whether this is the best choice. At least the board finally made a decision. I'm more concerned about the timing of the millage election that must follow.
If you sell your old high school, you have to build a new one. That requires a millage increase.
This is the worst time to sell a millage increase I've seen since moving to Fayetteville in 1998.
We're burning our boats by selling the high school. A burnt boat would be enough to convince people to go ahead most years. It might not, however, be enough to get them to build either a showpiece or a school second-to-none, however you view these things.
The housing market collapse isn't as bad here as in other parts of the country, but times aren't good.
People are tired of politics. About 7 percent turned out for Washington County primaries. Tell yourself all you want about how the future of the district is more important than the primary's one judicial race and Quorum Court contest. The debate on the school wouldn't have dragged on for more than a year if a strong consensus had come out of it. Voters clearly have mixed feelings if they have any feelings about it at all.
Then the people who do have strong feelings about it and want a new high school to be proud of will turn out, right? That's an argument I'd have considered a couple of years ago.
A good friend of mine observed recently that the Internet in general and e-mail in particular has organized "agginers."
All the advantages of being organized used to belong to the people who were working to pass something. They had the list of phone numbers and mailing addresses. They had the volunteers willing to call people on telephones and stuff envelopes, or drive people to polls.
You don't need a bunch of volunteers if you have a good e-mail list with the names of people who are as opposed as you are to things such as tax increases, however. One e-mail message copied to hundreds of like-minded folks -- "There's a tax election Tuesday. Be sure and vote against it." That sort of thing has an effect.
I'm not saying all is lost, or that the board should have somehow tried to sell a millage while hanging on to the high school. I'm saying the folks who want a first-rate school had better take nothing for granted.
A first-rate school these days, apparently, needs to include a movie theater.
One of my daughters graduated from Fayetteville High School. I had her keep a list of movies she was shown in class -- not educational films, but theatrical releases now on DVD.
There were 20. One was viewed twice, once each in two different classes.
Figure an hour and a half for each. That's 30 hours of classroom time in one year devoted to, for instance, Disney's "The Lion King," "The Gridiron Gang," "Apocalypto," "Finding Neverland," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," and "My Best Friend's Wedding."
I'm all for cinema as art. I can see some educational value in, for instance, "Downfall" or "Super Size Me." However, if this is the kind of curriculum we're going to provide at the new Fayetteville High, then let's at least give the kids a big screen to watch it on. Perhaps we can recoup some of the cost by selling popcorn.
Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock.
About this columnist
Doug Thompson of Fayetteville covers politics in fast-growing Northwest Arkansas. A native Arkansan, Thompson covered the Northwest region for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for three years before he and his wife, Lisa, left to join Stephens Media Group in February 2002. Lisa is now managing editor for The Morning News.
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