Retired Teacher: Abolish Middle School

[freshwest]

23. Aw crap, I was fact checking and wrote the wrong number. It was only about 8,000 students.

It was called a 4A school because of its size, and there are a number of them half that size now, but some are close to it. They don't let them get that big if they can help it now.

It was overcrowded because we were the Baby Boomers. There were not enough desks and some had to sit in the windsills as the school kept shuffling things about to supply us with furniture and books.

It was beautiful, built in 1936 by the WPA and as I said, like a small city. There wasn't much way to know the other students like smaller schools would be. The urban environment was normal to me.

Later the student body was spread out with two more high schools built nearby. When I graduated two thousand of us had to make a slow run across the stage of the city symphony hall. We didn't get our real diplomas, we handed them back when we went off stage and they used them again for the performance. The real ones were mailed to us later.

The city at that time had a population of 2 million but was expanding at a fast rate then, over 40 years ago. There was a boom as people moved in from the Rust Belt.

It has over 5 million people proper now and was always very aggressive annexing more land. It consists of over 600 square miles urban area with over 10,000 square miles in the metro area. One needs to figure out the square root, it's not THAT big. It does take a while to get around.

It has a lot of land, people, different cultures, businesses, industries, schools and pollution. One never has to leave to get anything wanted. the shopping was much better than the place I live now. I do miss that, and the food choices were a lot better, too.

Yet I left and am now happier for it. Most people that moved there came there for the money. Each time I travel to see friends, I'm blown away as it keeps on growing. Now the metro area has over 6 million people. Never the same, with more new buildings and roads all the time. Really a hassle to go there now.

Anyway, it worked for me. I was glad to grow up there at that point in time. As it's said, 'You can't go home again.'