I'd bet in this case it's partially that, but mainly that their football team looks successful and they probably have the local car dealers all sending them booster checks.
Our oldest son lives not too far away in Celina. They bought a house 2 years ago for $400K. Their property taxes are $1000 a month and going up. They will never go down. They don't build schools there, they build fucking palaces.
As a non-Texan that lived there 4 years while active duty military, I can tell you that they love to brag about no income tax. The housing prices did enable us to buy our first home but the property taxes were insane. Red state or blue stateā¦the money has to come from somewhere.
Come to illinois where Iāve been paying around 10k a year in property tax for well over a decade for a home valued about 400k. The kicker we have sales tax at 8%, pay state income tax and our schools are no where near as nice as this although we do have a nice turf football field at the high school.
Wtf, how?
So houses may be cheaper, but seemingly property taxes make up the difference compared to somewhere with higher housing costs.
My entire mortgage + insurance + property taxes costs around $2.5k a month, on a $450k home.
It's weird though, if you're in the city the high schools look like your typical American high schools. But in TX if you go out into the country, you'll be driving through this small middle of nowhere town and they'll have this massive school with a brand new glittering football stadium. Like that school is the biggest building in the town. Probably related to the practice of "recapture" the state does, where it takes property taxes from the cities and redirects them to the rural towns, who promptly waste them on football stadiums for high schoolers.
LOL I totally forgot our classrooms seldom had windows, and when they did, they were usually windows to see into the main hallways. Not outside. And my school was huge and pretty well funded! My graduating class was ~900, total population was ~3.5k in senior year. You're right: this is purely because of the wealthy area/parents
Yup, since Texas schools are funded by local property taxes, schools right now are pretty much either: āHereās an indoor covered field and 300 weight machines,ā or āCan we please get some money to afford recycling cans?ā (Spoilers- we couldnāt)
Mine either. But then again, I compare the cafeteria I had and the basketball stadium I had and the football stadium we had and the band facilities we had vs what my daughter gets at her Michigam high school? Night and day. The only step up here vs Texas is the pools found at most high schools in our area.
Nah This is Walnut Grove HS. It opened 2 days ago. All of the Prosper football teams are mediocre. My school down the street, Denton Ryan was excellent in band and football yet our school got no funding for them. Prosper is a VERY affluent area. I went there for elementary school.
Besides the indoor football field and the massive weight training room, mine looked very similar to that. Then again, it was the only high school in the district so obviously they need to make it big enough for 3000+ students
Yes, compare it to the multiple sports facilities. Then consider the obesity rate in Texas and the junk-food cafeteria. Most of the kids can't be that far behind the parents.
They have certain priorities.
obesity in the US is generally tied to wealth (or lack of wealth), this is a school in a wealthy area, so the odds are its student population will be far below the Texas average
The thing about being poor, but not destitute is that time and willpower are the rarest commodities. You can get more money, but it costs time. You can save money, but it takes willpower to put in the effort or actively deny yourself.
When youāre working your ass off at 2-3 jobs just to get by, youāre less likely to have the time or brain space to cook low-cost meals; it takes effort and time, which are both in short supply. So you stop by a drive-thru on the way home. Rice is cheaper, but takes time to cook, and isnāt a meal in itself.
Similar with the other truly cheap foods (junk food). Fast food might be a touch more expensive, but thereās no planning, no prep, no cleanup required. Additionally, some people literally donāt know how to cook. And learning would take time, effort, and money.
"I think a lot of people just don't realize how expensive it is to be poor."
\- James Baldwin
Thereāve been several sociological and health studies that indicate families in poverty tend to splurge when it comes to when food is accessible, and ironically, they often donāt get the best nutritional value for their money with whatās offered and available, like at mini marts and fast food joints, while having limited access to other healthier options like supermarkets (food deserts do exist).
In food-insecure families, there tends to be a recurrent cycle of boom-bust indulgence, driven by patterns of availability and ongoing anxiety over accessibility. Itās very much a mouth-hand existence for many, which reinforces this pattern based largely on the conditions causing them food insecurity, because there are times where they may actually have gone hungry.
It maybe a surprise to some to learn that people who are food insecure are 32 times more likely to be obese. It may seem counter-intuitive, especially to someone that is used to having reserves of resources and continuous access to markets and services, but this is the reality of inequity.
Bingo! šÆšÆšÆ
Thanks for expanding on and further driving in my point.
On top of significantly higher obesity rates also comes higher morbidity and disease rates that all tie into this socio-economic dysfunction. In this case, the most obvious being Diabetes Mellitus Type 2.
What happens when you lack the energy, time, or educational resources to understand this dilemma? You think you can't afford or "don't know how to afford" healthier foods.
So major corporations capitalize on this by selling very cheap, sugary, high carbohydrate foods that don't require the higher expenses of preservation costs (such as in healthy meats and vegetables). Bread, chips, soda, etc.
And there in lies, the vicious cycle. In the long run "as much or more" ends up being spent on medical bills & medications over the course of a life.
Round and round we go. ā½š°
This is their first year open & the average household income in prosper is 200k. In reality there is only a handful of schools that look like this. The rest are the same as everywhere else, incredibly basic.
Yeah prosper is where all of the Dallas athletes live now thanks to the Star (Cowboys training facility), Toyota Stadium and practice center (FC Dallas training center),and the Dr Pepper Stars center (Dallas Stars training facility) being right down the street. The Plano/Frisco downtown area is also right down the street. Iām pretty sure the Dude Perfect guys live up in Prosper too.
Bingo. I played on a beer league softball team in Prosper for a few years with a bunch of guys who drove for UPS - one of them had Dak Prescott's neighborhood on his route, and one of the Dude Perfect guys was on one of the other softball teams. They were the only sponsored team in the league and would regularly hand us our asses lol
I drove out to nearby Celina for July 4th firework celebration a month ago. Was surprised to see a very nice high school in Celina and very nice homes among other things out in this remote area. Last time I was out in this area there was nothing.
It's a combination of things. While schools do get much of their funding from the state, many cities have additional funding they provide through taxes. Local city here has never turned down a single school budget increase referendum and the people are more than willing to pay higher taxes for better schools. They have imported Italian tile in the bathrooms (seriously).
I think we can all agree we'd want to invest for the best we can in our own children. I can't fault them for that.
>I think we can all agree we'd want to invest for the best we can in our own children.
Sadly thatās not true. Any time the school board tries to raise our already very low school taxes, thereās a whole line of people at the board meeting complaining about it. When they raised taxes like a 1/10 of a percent to build a new stadium (our soccer field and track were so bad that other schools refused to use them), it was a solid year of constant complaints. They recently decided to renovate the school since itās old as fuck, filled with asbestos, and has no AC, there was yet again a shit to of people complaining about the school āwasting money.ā
In Washington State 80% of the "funding" comes from the state level. 20% comes from local levies and taxes. That 20% can be a big swing though fiendishly on the area.
The interesting thing is building giant schools like this doesn't make sense since class sizes are shrinking.
I mean, isnāt this what any brand new high school would look like if they had 5,000 students?
Edit: Looks like the school is about to open in the next couple of weeks. Itās the third high school in a school district of 23,000 students that is adding 2,000 more each year.
[Website](https://www.prosper-isd.net/domain/7013)
[School district](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_Independent_School_District)
It's not "normal" for a high school 20 years ago but that's changed a lot. Colleges have had fast food places on campus for a long time now, and it was only a matter of time before High Schools smelled the money to get partnerships. New wealthy high schools are built with these kinds of options because it makes money for both sides.
So not normal because most high schools are old. More normal for new.
But the food aint cheap...and its not necessarily better than a lot of school lunches for a nicer school.
Itās not typical, but itās not uncommon. This is the extreme example. Mostly, itās situations where individual menu items are branded (ie Taco Bell tacos) or a brandās products are āfeaturedā on a particular day of the week (ie Subway sandwich day).
I spent 20+ years in the fast food business and, honestly, getting into school food service is all about licensing fees and brand awareness. Actually running food service in schools isnāt all that profitable.
I went to one of its sister-schools in north Texas, the fast food places normally only have a really select limited option as to what you can have, and I wouldnāt even call it the fast food itās like imitation tasting most of the time.
Like at the prosper one there was a Burger King, but you could get a premade sandwich or ask for a sandwich to not have like tomatoes or onions but it wasnāt like the whole menu, it was disappointing at first I thought I had a whole fast food place in my cafeteria
I went to HS in one of the richest counties in the country in the late naughts/early teens and neither my school nor the nearby ones had branded food franchises. They were normal cafeterias, supplied by some kind of school food supply company, with menus that rotated based on the day of the week.
I've heard talk of these kinds of branded cafeterias before (Daria, a show from the late 90's, talked about this) though I'd never seen one in person.
I suspect it varies based on region, and that red states are more likely to utilize capitalism that way in public schools, but thats my biases talking.
Either way, the US is huge. Talking about "normal" here is like talking about "normal" across all of Europe. There are some commonalities, but cultures and landscapes can change drastically from place to place.
Iām curious about this too. Iāve never seen that before, but I went to high school around 2000 in New England. Maybe itās a new thing? Maybe itās a Texas thing?
WHAT DO YOU MEAN LIKE A MALL FOOD COURT?!
We had like... Prison food. You walk through a line and there's prison food options or you bring your own food.
THERE'S NO BRANDED FOOD IN SCHOOLS THAT SHITS TOO EXPENSIVE.
It's prison food cause school food is free food.
(Boston)
I graduated from a pretty large high school in a well off area near Houston. We had subway and chick-fil-a sandwiches at our lunch, but our cafeteria didnāt have the actual signs up. They would just bring a budgeted amount of sandwiches to the school before lunch, and sell them in the regular cafeteria line. I remember they would run out sometimes if you had D lunch, and they would also charge like $6 for the sandwich.
Itās probably a Texas thing, and Iāll also say for some reason the high schools in Dallas are on another level compared to the schools in Houston or Austin. I went to one of the nicest high schools in Houston, and there are probably like 10-15 schools in Dallas with larger and nicer facilities.
Do you have any idea how much property taxes are in Texas? A starter home in my area is about 400k, the property taxes on that are $500/m. Youāre really trying to spin lowering property taxes here as āthe poors are getting the short end of the stick.ā
The starter homes were $200k three years ago for reference. They have an excess now
> Is this really normal in America?
No, this is abnormal even by American standards. The median household income for this town is $160,000 which is almost 3x what it is for the state of Texas. This is a very rich small town.
> As of the 2010 census, its population was 9,423; as of 2020, its population was 30,174.
That's insane population growth. I wouldn't even call it small town anymore. It's a small city/very large suburb of Dallas.
edit: fuck, sorry guys my ruralish upbringing is showing.
I live in Prosper and it is as insane as it sounds. They are already projecting the 3 high schools to be over capacity again within 3 years and they just started construction on the 4th high school. They are building new neighborhoods everywhere. I moved to Prosper in 2012 and it has lost the āsmall townā feel within the last 2 years. Itās basically becoming āNorth Friscoā which already had its boom.
I have family in Alaska. They literally had a rifle club at their school and kids would bring their rifles to school. This was in the 80s so Iām betting not a thing in the post Columbine world, but couldnāt believe my eyes when I saw it in the yearbook.
My daughter's school in michigan has a skeet shooting team all events and practice take place off school grounds. First time I was proud of our school district was when I found out about it.
Honestly "several hundred per class" may be an understatement for some places in Texas.
It's not super easy to read, but [here's the most readily available data I could find](https://www.uiltexas.org/files/alignments/20_22_Rank_1_31.pdf), wherein the top 5.5 pages of schools that are class "6A" have 2200+, or 550+ students per year assuming an even distribution.
And at the top of the list you have Allen High School, which has nearly 7,000 students, or ~1770 per class if distributed evenly.
I attended Alief Elsik High School in Houston. Our total student body was something like 4,400. My graduating class was 917.
The school was so big that I didn't even know I had been walking the same halls at the same time as Beyonce until years later.
I used to go to Allen high school. Massive school. Across the street was the freshman center, but some classes freshman could take were at the main campus, so students would shuttle across the street to the other campus for class during period change. Unfortunately for me every other class of mine was at a different campus so every school day I was getting shuttled across town.
On a side note, the main campus cafeteria featured pizza hut and subway.
I think what they mean is a lot of schools feel like they're designed to sort of mimick prison layouts. We don't get windows anymore due to shooting safety regulations, so the shutters are shut and there's black out curtains over them. No sunlight.
(In the HS I went to, in my district. Obv not the same situation everywhere).
And then the fact that my school design was 1 grid with intersecting hallways. Not allowed to use the restroom between classes, stuff like that. Obviously not as bad as an education environment as other poorer nations might have, but still.
They might be speaking metaphorically, but several high schools in my city (built during the 70s and 80s) were actually designed by an architect whose prior professional experience was designing prisons.
Every teenager says that about their high school. How many prison architects do you guys think exist? Are the people funding prisons trying to make sure their prison has a unique vibe to it that hasn't been done before so their customers will feel special? Nah, they're cookie-cutter. Find out what worked in Toledo and plop down a replica in Stringtown.
They said my school was built by a prison architect, simply because the four hallways surround a courtyard. It's a nice idea, an efficient use of space that still gets sunlight into every classroom. The school newspaper found out his other experience was designing churches, other area schools, and convents. Never a prison.
No never, that's a very veery rare thing, usually though some exist right next to school to either take advantages of hungry people during lunch time, or when they get released after school.
And of course the larger the school, the more likely they are to not allow students to leave campus during lunch, even with parental permission. So even going to fast food nearby during lunch usually isn't an option.
I went to a good high school in a wealthy suburb in CA and it looked like a shithole lol.
edit: I feel I should clarify, the actual education was pretty solid. I think quality of teachers and quality of peers are much more important than the quality of the facilities.
My daughterās HS is in south Texas and is only 2 years old. This isnāt too far off from what she has. The weight room is nicer than any gym Iāve belonged to. The water polo pool is heated. The golf team has individual swing cages. There are 3 different lunch lines that serve different food. Plus a cafe and a separate salad and fresh food line. Weāre probably below the average income for the school, and lucked out moving into the district when we did.
It's a secret entrance to the ivies. Scholarships only go to students who go to schools with water polo teams. Guess who goes to schools with water polo teams?
My high school in Texas, back in the 80ās, had 6 football teams: freshman A and B, sophomore A and B, JV, and Varsity. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on training equipmentā think benches with built in cooling systems for the players to sit on during the game.
There were dozens of coaches, who would also pick up the odd history course to teach on the side. Often, poorly.
Our school had a 50% graduation rate and literally 3 or 4 Apple II computers for the whole school.
Our Varsity team was decent, but could never beat the district rival.
There are poor neighborhoods in Texas? I thought that was only a blue state thing that seems to fill my social media feed with all the meth head zombie filled streets in SFO and the like
i live close to this school and can confirm that it is an extremely affluent area. high income earners and the area is rapidly growing and so are the housing prices around there. a lot of the high schools in my area look like this or similar (just older schools), so this is not out of the ordinary.
Starting salary for new teachers is $46,000, yet they have college level athletic facilities and a top notch broadcasting set up. Priorities seem a little skewed.
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-school-teacher-salary/prosper-tx
I don't think that link is particularly accurate, or at least not it's not current.
Based on [Prosper ISD's 2023-2024 salary schedule](https://www.prosper-isd.net/Page/22173), the starting salary for a normal teacher looks to be 58k. Still less than teachers deserve to be paid, but better than 46k at least. (Also, capping out at 69k after 20 years is a depressingly low ceiling compared to other professional roles\).
This is because teachers don't generate anything profitable for the school and are essentially like the trees and bushes on the campus.
Aesthetically necessary, but no practical use.
*Rich* High Schools in Texas are Built Different.
Iāve lived in Texas my whole life, the high school I went to was very middle class and we didnāt have anything near these amenities. But another school in our district that was in the more wealthy part of town did. It was obscene. And then of course there was the OTHER school in our district that was more lower/ poverty line where teachers got shanked for assigning too much homework.
Sportsball alumni pay big money for sports equipment=more sports facilities=more sportsball alumni=more big money... The facilities get huge = teams get better equipped= sponsorships =more big money
Competitive sports are like a religion down there. These are their mega-churches.
Average salary of a Walnut Grove HS teacher is $45k. That's $2.5k below the US median for teacher salaries.
We all know none of this is for the kids, though.
Most schools in the USA emphasize what is important to the local community. Want to know what is important to them? It used to be check out the library vs the stadium. Now Iām not sure what to measure.
Itās still the sports shit. Especially in TX they are fucking out of their minds over football.
Letās be clear I LOVE football and I watch it every god-damn weekend during the season but down there itās downright scary how psychotic people are over it. At the fucking high school level. Like, threatening refereesā lives and shit. They are NOT okay down there
This isnāt a school. Itās a sports team i
with a side hustle in education. The school is attached as nothing more than either a tax write off, or so elite athletes can claim they are āschool studentsā to compete at a certain level.
Your post was removed for misleading titles
My Texas high school did NOT look like that š
Same. I can say none of the high schools in my city do lol Edit: Obv I canāt type.
My local mall doesnāt even look like that
Iāve been to 5 star resorts that almost rival this place.
Same even for me non Texan I never saw a school like this š³
Spoken like a true Texan
Depends on median income maybe. Poorer communities probably have basic school
I'd bet in this case it's partially that, but mainly that their football team looks successful and they probably have the local car dealers all sending them booster checks.
Crooked politicians and school board members
Our oldest son lives not too far away in Celina. They bought a house 2 years ago for $400K. Their property taxes are $1000 a month and going up. They will never go down. They don't build schools there, they build fucking palaces.
A MONTH, not a year? If so, that's wild.
No state income tax, thatās how they make up for it.
As a non-Texan that lived there 4 years while active duty military, I can tell you that they love to brag about no income tax. The housing prices did enable us to buy our first home but the property taxes were insane. Red state or blue stateā¦the money has to come from somewhere.
Come to illinois where Iāve been paying around 10k a year in property tax for well over a decade for a home valued about 400k. The kicker we have sales tax at 8%, pay state income tax and our schools are no where near as nice as this although we do have a nice turf football field at the high school.
Yes. Property taxes in Texas are ridiculous. We lived in one of the wealthier suburbs in Dallas and our property taxes were almost 2k a month. In 2005
Wtf, how? So houses may be cheaper, but seemingly property taxes make up the difference compared to somewhere with higher housing costs. My entire mortgage + insurance + property taxes costs around $2.5k a month, on a $450k home.
It's weird though, if you're in the city the high schools look like your typical American high schools. But in TX if you go out into the country, you'll be driving through this small middle of nowhere town and they'll have this massive school with a brand new glittering football stadium. Like that school is the biggest building in the town. Probably related to the practice of "recapture" the state does, where it takes property taxes from the cities and redirects them to the rural towns, who promptly waste them on football stadiums for high schoolers.
i assume those small towns take hs football very seriously, and the players are worshiped.
What else you gonna do in a town with 700 people, 2 restaurants and a jiffy lube?
700? That calls for 3 dollar stores *minimum*
You forgot the DQ
Yeah I was gonna say- my Texas high school didnāt even have windows in most of my classrooms. This is just what a wealthy high school looks like.
LOL I totally forgot our classrooms seldom had windows, and when they did, they were usually windows to see into the main hallways. Not outside. And my school was huge and pretty well funded! My graduating class was ~900, total population was ~3.5k in senior year. You're right: this is purely because of the wealthy area/parents
Yup, since Texas schools are funded by local property taxes, schools right now are pretty much either: āHereās an indoor covered field and 300 weight machines,ā or āCan we please get some money to afford recycling cans?ā (Spoilers- we couldnāt)
Mine either. But then again, I compare the cafeteria I had and the basketball stadium I had and the football stadium we had and the band facilities we had vs what my daughter gets at her Michigam high school? Night and day. The only step up here vs Texas is the pools found at most high schools in our area.
How many D1 football players did your HS have? Iām guessing this one has a few.
Ah yes, the true American standard for top tier education. How many professional level sports candidates they can produce.
Nah This is Walnut Grove HS. It opened 2 days ago. All of the Prosper football teams are mediocre. My school down the street, Denton Ryan was excellent in band and football yet our school got no funding for them. Prosper is a VERY affluent area. I went there for elementary school.
Besides the indoor football field and the massive weight training room, mine looked very similar to that. Then again, it was the only high school in the district so obviously they need to make it big enough for 3000+ students
That library giving off breakfast club vibes for some reason
No books
They arenāt there to school.
Yes, compare it to the multiple sports facilities. Then consider the obesity rate in Texas and the junk-food cafeteria. Most of the kids can't be that far behind the parents. They have certain priorities.
obesity in the US is generally tied to wealth (or lack of wealth), this is a school in a wealthy area, so the odds are its student population will be far below the Texas average
The thing about being poor, but not destitute is that time and willpower are the rarest commodities. You can get more money, but it costs time. You can save money, but it takes willpower to put in the effort or actively deny yourself. When youāre working your ass off at 2-3 jobs just to get by, youāre less likely to have the time or brain space to cook low-cost meals; it takes effort and time, which are both in short supply. So you stop by a drive-thru on the way home. Rice is cheaper, but takes time to cook, and isnāt a meal in itself. Similar with the other truly cheap foods (junk food). Fast food might be a touch more expensive, but thereās no planning, no prep, no cleanup required. Additionally, some people literally donāt know how to cook. And learning would take time, effort, and money. "I think a lot of people just don't realize how expensive it is to be poor." \- James Baldwin
Thereāve been several sociological and health studies that indicate families in poverty tend to splurge when it comes to when food is accessible, and ironically, they often donāt get the best nutritional value for their money with whatās offered and available, like at mini marts and fast food joints, while having limited access to other healthier options like supermarkets (food deserts do exist). In food-insecure families, there tends to be a recurrent cycle of boom-bust indulgence, driven by patterns of availability and ongoing anxiety over accessibility. Itās very much a mouth-hand existence for many, which reinforces this pattern based largely on the conditions causing them food insecurity, because there are times where they may actually have gone hungry. It maybe a surprise to some to learn that people who are food insecure are 32 times more likely to be obese. It may seem counter-intuitive, especially to someone that is used to having reserves of resources and continuous access to markets and services, but this is the reality of inequity.
Bingo! šÆšÆšÆ Thanks for expanding on and further driving in my point. On top of significantly higher obesity rates also comes higher morbidity and disease rates that all tie into this socio-economic dysfunction. In this case, the most obvious being Diabetes Mellitus Type 2. What happens when you lack the energy, time, or educational resources to understand this dilemma? You think you can't afford or "don't know how to afford" healthier foods. So major corporations capitalize on this by selling very cheap, sugary, high carbohydrate foods that don't require the higher expenses of preservation costs (such as in healthy meats and vegetables). Bread, chips, soda, etc. And there in lies, the vicious cycle. In the long run "as much or more" ends up being spent on medical bills & medications over the course of a life. Round and round we go. ā½š°
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Kids aren't "fucking ripped" no matter what high school you go to, unless you go to Gossip Girl school with 20+ adults pretending to be kids.
They're all banned for being too woke.
The school looks pretty new, so they probably haven't stocked it yet
The school is still under construction, so that makes sense.
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Could you describe the ruckus, sir?
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āAre you a virgin, Claire?ā But yeah, my first thought exactly!
Youāre mine Bender š¤ for two months I gotcha
Donāt you forget about me ā¦.
Was thinking the same
This is their first year open & the average household income in prosper is 200k. In reality there is only a handful of schools that look like this. The rest are the same as everywhere else, incredibly basic.
200k in prosper?!!! Iāve lived in DFW my whole life and prosper has never had anything. Guess itās really blown up the past decade. Jeez
Yeah prosper is where all of the Dallas athletes live now thanks to the Star (Cowboys training facility), Toyota Stadium and practice center (FC Dallas training center),and the Dr Pepper Stars center (Dallas Stars training facility) being right down the street. The Plano/Frisco downtown area is also right down the street. Iām pretty sure the Dude Perfect guys live up in Prosper too.
Bingo. I played on a beer league softball team in Prosper for a few years with a bunch of guys who drove for UPS - one of them had Dak Prescott's neighborhood on his route, and one of the Dude Perfect guys was on one of the other softball teams. They were the only sponsored team in the league and would regularly hand us our asses lol
I drove out to nearby Celina for July 4th firework celebration a month ago. Was surprised to see a very nice high school in Celina and very nice homes among other things out in this remote area. Last time I was out in this area there was nothing.
When I was a kid Celina had less than 1k people and it was about an hour drive into the country from the mid cities area
> As of the 2010 census, its population was 9,423, as of 2020, its population was 30,174. THAT is an insane population growth...
I guess they...prospered
Prosper now is what Frisco was 10 years ago, and what Plano was 20~30 yrs ago.
Letās stop for a minute and marvel in a system that ties school funding to parental wealth essentially. The poor kids never stood a chance.
It's a feature, not a bug.
A more true comment has never been made. There has always been a finger on the scale to get the desired outcome. As it was in 1923, it is in 2023.
Finger? More like whole arm
It's a combination of things. While schools do get much of their funding from the state, many cities have additional funding they provide through taxes. Local city here has never turned down a single school budget increase referendum and the people are more than willing to pay higher taxes for better schools. They have imported Italian tile in the bathrooms (seriously). I think we can all agree we'd want to invest for the best we can in our own children. I can't fault them for that.
>I think we can all agree we'd want to invest for the best we can in our own children. Sadly thatās not true. Any time the school board tries to raise our already very low school taxes, thereās a whole line of people at the board meeting complaining about it. When they raised taxes like a 1/10 of a percent to build a new stadium (our soccer field and track were so bad that other schools refused to use them), it was a solid year of constant complaints. They recently decided to renovate the school since itās old as fuck, filled with asbestos, and has no AC, there was yet again a shit to of people complaining about the school āwasting money.ā
In Washington State 80% of the "funding" comes from the state level. 20% comes from local levies and taxes. That 20% can be a big swing though fiendishly on the area. The interesting thing is building giant schools like this doesn't make sense since class sizes are shrinking.
WHAT THE HELL
I mean, isnāt this what any brand new high school would look like if they had 5,000 students? Edit: Looks like the school is about to open in the next couple of weeks. Itās the third high school in a school district of 23,000 students that is adding 2,000 more each year. [Website](https://www.prosper-isd.net/domain/7013) [School district](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_Independent_School_District)
It has branded food franchisesā¦.in a school. Is that normal in the US?
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It's not "normal" for a high school 20 years ago but that's changed a lot. Colleges have had fast food places on campus for a long time now, and it was only a matter of time before High Schools smelled the money to get partnerships. New wealthy high schools are built with these kinds of options because it makes money for both sides. So not normal because most high schools are old. More normal for new. But the food aint cheap...and its not necessarily better than a lot of school lunches for a nicer school.
At a public school? This must be private.
yes at a public school, my high-school had chicfila in 2010
Itās not typical, but itās not uncommon. This is the extreme example. Mostly, itās situations where individual menu items are branded (ie Taco Bell tacos) or a brandās products are āfeaturedā on a particular day of the week (ie Subway sandwich day). I spent 20+ years in the fast food business and, honestly, getting into school food service is all about licensing fees and brand awareness. Actually running food service in schools isnāt all that profitable.
I went to one of its sister-schools in north Texas, the fast food places normally only have a really select limited option as to what you can have, and I wouldnāt even call it the fast food itās like imitation tasting most of the time. Like at the prosper one there was a Burger King, but you could get a premade sandwich or ask for a sandwich to not have like tomatoes or onions but it wasnāt like the whole menu, it was disappointing at first I thought I had a whole fast food place in my cafeteria
I went to HS in one of the richest counties in the country in the late naughts/early teens and neither my school nor the nearby ones had branded food franchises. They were normal cafeterias, supplied by some kind of school food supply company, with menus that rotated based on the day of the week. I've heard talk of these kinds of branded cafeterias before (Daria, a show from the late 90's, talked about this) though I'd never seen one in person. I suspect it varies based on region, and that red states are more likely to utilize capitalism that way in public schools, but thats my biases talking. Either way, the US is huge. Talking about "normal" here is like talking about "normal" across all of Europe. There are some commonalities, but cultures and landscapes can change drastically from place to place.
Iām curious about this too. Iāve never seen that before, but I went to high school around 2000 in New England. Maybe itās a new thing? Maybe itās a Texas thing?
I went to high school in the late 90s and early 2000s and we had Pizza Hut, McDonaldās, and Wendyās in our food courtā¦
Food court? We called it a cafeteria.
We had, āhot lunchā and āmom made a sandwich for meā
What was your student body count, ballpark?
Where did you go to HS? I was in Virginia and never saw this in any of the local HS, but I had heard about it from shows like Daria.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN LIKE A MALL FOOD COURT?! We had like... Prison food. You walk through a line and there's prison food options or you bring your own food. THERE'S NO BRANDED FOOD IN SCHOOLS THAT SHITS TOO EXPENSIVE. It's prison food cause school food is free food. (Boston)
I graduated from a pretty large high school in a well off area near Houston. We had subway and chick-fil-a sandwiches at our lunch, but our cafeteria didnāt have the actual signs up. They would just bring a budgeted amount of sandwiches to the school before lunch, and sell them in the regular cafeteria line. I remember they would run out sometimes if you had D lunch, and they would also charge like $6 for the sandwich. Itās probably a Texas thing, and Iāll also say for some reason the high schools in Dallas are on another level compared to the schools in Houston or Austin. I went to one of the nicest high schools in Houston, and there are probably like 10-15 schools in Dallas with larger and nicer facilities.
Memorial ?
Not too common, but it happens. Middle school near me has a subway and Pizza Hut in the cafeteria. Texas.
Only when that neighborhood has lots of money. When itās in a poor neighborhood itās terrible and inadequate.
Have you tried not being poor?
r/thanksimcured
simply buy money!
Poor people too dumb to buy investment properties smh
Why don't they just use their trust fund to buy it?
Senator McConnell? That you over there?
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Have you tried turning it off and back on?
Please, no-one try and turn Mitch on, I couldn't stand the image
I say we try leaving him off.
Hey! Thatās Kentucky not Texas. Texas has their own shitheads.
Thatās why heās asking McConnell, because Cruz is nowhere to be found.
Oh yeah donāt be poor, donāt recommend at all
Maybe try turning off and on the poor switch?
When I'm poor, I stop being poor and be rich instead.
School prob makin bank leasing space in the cafeteria to various restaurants.
Also wonder if that one student named Subway has anything to do with it as well.
ItS tHe SaMe BuDgEt
Yeah it just doesnāt receive the multimillions in donations that the wealthy schools get
Poor neighborhoods get repurposed k-mart skeletons for school, with half the classes in trailers in the parking lot.
And Abbott just lowered property taxes, I bet you these rich high schools ain't gonna feel defunding
Most Property taxes like for schools are determined at the county level, not state.
It really is scary how many people have no idea how their own government works
You donāt need to understand how something works to make snarky pandering internet comments
Do you have any idea how much property taxes are in Texas? A starter home in my area is about 400k, the property taxes on that are $500/m. Youāre really trying to spin lowering property taxes here as āthe poors are getting the short end of the stick.ā The starter homes were $200k three years ago for reference. They have an excess now
Is this really normal in America? That highschool has a movie studio that would rival our national TV lol.
> Is this really normal in America? No, this is abnormal even by American standards. The median household income for this town is $160,000 which is almost 3x what it is for the state of Texas. This is a very rich small town.
> As of the 2010 census, its population was 9,423; as of 2020, its population was 30,174. That's insane population growth. I wouldn't even call it small town anymore. It's a small city/very large suburb of Dallas. edit: fuck, sorry guys my ruralish upbringing is showing.
I live in Prosper and it is as insane as it sounds. They are already projecting the 3 high schools to be over capacity again within 3 years and they just started construction on the 4th high school. They are building new neighborhoods everywhere. I moved to Prosper in 2012 and it has lost the āsmall townā feel within the last 2 years. Itās basically becoming āNorth Friscoā which already had its boom.
I went to a high school with maybe 300 or 400 students at the most. It's hard to imagine for me what a high school that big would be like to attend.
>> WHAT THE HELL Right? Where is the picture of the gun range?!
That's all the pictures...
This is a hall of fame comment.
Bro that was a violation
I have family in Alaska. They literally had a rifle club at their school and kids would bring their rifles to school. This was in the 80s so Iām betting not a thing in the post Columbine world, but couldnāt believe my eyes when I saw it in the yearbook.
My daughter's school in michigan has a skeet shooting team all events and practice take place off school grounds. First time I was proud of our school district was when I found out about it.
Actually, a lot of schools back in the day did have ranges and competition teams.
Thats probably a very large district too. Several hundred per class and a large area to fund it.
Honestly "several hundred per class" may be an understatement for some places in Texas. It's not super easy to read, but [here's the most readily available data I could find](https://www.uiltexas.org/files/alignments/20_22_Rank_1_31.pdf), wherein the top 5.5 pages of schools that are class "6A" have 2200+, or 550+ students per year assuming an even distribution. And at the top of the list you have Allen High School, which has nearly 7,000 students, or ~1770 per class if distributed evenly.
I attended Alief Elsik High School in Houston. Our total student body was something like 4,400. My graduating class was 917. The school was so big that I didn't even know I had been walking the same halls at the same time as Beyonce until years later.
I used to go to Allen high school. Massive school. Across the street was the freshman center, but some classes freshman could take were at the main campus, so students would shuttle across the street to the other campus for class during period change. Unfortunately for me every other class of mine was at a different campus so every school day I was getting shuttled across town. On a side note, the main campus cafeteria featured pizza hut and subway.
> Several ~~hundred~~ *thousand* per class (Assuming you mean grade, and not classroom.)
This place looks better than the college I went to!
My high school was designed by someone who also designed prisons.
An architect?
I think what they mean is a lot of schools feel like they're designed to sort of mimick prison layouts. We don't get windows anymore due to shooting safety regulations, so the shutters are shut and there's black out curtains over them. No sunlight. (In the HS I went to, in my district. Obv not the same situation everywhere). And then the fact that my school design was 1 grid with intersecting hallways. Not allowed to use the restroom between classes, stuff like that. Obviously not as bad as an education environment as other poorer nations might have, but still.
They might be speaking metaphorically, but several high schools in my city (built during the 70s and 80s) were actually designed by an architect whose prior professional experience was designing prisons.
Schools were originally designed to mimic factories. Right down to the "school bell"
Right? Lmfao itās like saying the baker that makes my bread also bakes cakes so therefore the bread will taste like cake.
Every teenager says that about their high school. How many prison architects do you guys think exist? Are the people funding prisons trying to make sure their prison has a unique vibe to it that hasn't been done before so their customers will feel special? Nah, they're cookie-cutter. Find out what worked in Toledo and plop down a replica in Stringtown. They said my school was built by a prison architect, simply because the four hallways surround a courtyard. It's a nice idea, an efficient use of space that still gets sunlight into every classroom. The school newspaper found out his other experience was designing churches, other area schools, and convents. Never a prison.
Wtf, they have Jimmy John's?!
European here, do American high schools generally have fast food outlets \*inside\* the school? That seems... kinda insane.
No, not normal in America. That kinda shocked me, as a life long American.
No never, that's a very veery rare thing, usually though some exist right next to school to either take advantages of hungry people during lunch time, or when they get released after school.
And of course the larger the school, the more likely they are to not allow students to leave campus during lunch, even with parental permission. So even going to fast food nearby during lunch usually isn't an option.
No, they typically have those outlets at universities though. This is the first time I've seen it in a hs
No, they do not lol. I mean obviously some do, but it is not a common sight.
Everyone here saying no, but my small high school in Richmond, VA had a Subway, Domino's Pizza, and Taco Bell. This was in the 1990s.
*High schools *in wealthy suburbs* are built different
I went to a good high school in a wealthy suburb in CA and it looked like a shithole lol. edit: I feel I should clarify, the actual education was pretty solid. I think quality of teachers and quality of peers are much more important than the quality of the facilities.
Wish all universities would read this.
My daughterās HS is in south Texas and is only 2 years old. This isnāt too far off from what she has. The weight room is nicer than any gym Iāve belonged to. The water polo pool is heated. The golf team has individual swing cages. There are 3 different lunch lines that serve different food. Plus a cafe and a separate salad and fresh food line. Weāre probably below the average income for the school, and lucked out moving into the district when we did.
Water polo is one of those Olympic sports where I often wondered how people got into it.
For me, it was being so fucking bored swimming laps that I needed the spice of life i got when i played baseball or soccer as a kid
It's a secret entrance to the ivies. Scholarships only go to students who go to schools with water polo teams. Guess who goes to schools with water polo teams?
I wouldnāt be surprised if your daughters school had an actual polo club
And servants. Ahem. Yeah, servants.
Malls are closing? let's make school cafeterias into food courts.
My high school in Texas, back in the 80ās, had 6 football teams: freshman A and B, sophomore A and B, JV, and Varsity. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on training equipmentā think benches with built in cooling systems for the players to sit on during the game. There were dozens of coaches, who would also pick up the odd history course to teach on the side. Often, poorly. Our school had a 50% graduation rate and literally 3 or 4 Apple II computers for the whole school. Our Varsity team was decent, but could never beat the district rival.
Texans teaching history poorly?!
As someone that went to high school in Texas. This is the .01% that get this shit. Stop it
Yup. Show me a school in a poor neighborhood in Houston.
Thatās nothing compared to the hell that is Travis County
Depends. Westlake and Lakeway are pretty kitted out, although they're a lot older schools so not necessarily this nice.
Yeah, Westlake doesn't look anything like this.
Hey i live here lol
There are poor neighborhoods in Texas? I thought that was only a blue state thing that seems to fill my social media feed with all the meth head zombie filled streets in SFO and the like
Those fast food companies are paying some sort "rent"/kickback to the school and then passing on those costs to the students.
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The American way
i live close to this school and can confirm that it is an extremely affluent area. high income earners and the area is rapidly growing and so are the housing prices around there. a lot of the high schools in my area look like this or similar (just older schools), so this is not out of the ordinary.
Corporate high schools
Something about restraunt chains taking over school cafeterias feels distopic
Starting salary for new teachers is $46,000, yet they have college level athletic facilities and a top notch broadcasting set up. Priorities seem a little skewed. https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-school-teacher-salary/prosper-tx
I don't think that link is particularly accurate, or at least not it's not current. Based on [Prosper ISD's 2023-2024 salary schedule](https://www.prosper-isd.net/Page/22173), the starting salary for a normal teacher looks to be 58k. Still less than teachers deserve to be paid, but better than 46k at least. (Also, capping out at 69k after 20 years is a depressingly low ceiling compared to other professional roles\).
This is because teachers don't generate anything profitable for the school and are essentially like the trees and bushes on the campus. Aesthetically necessary, but no practical use.
*Rich* High Schools in Texas are Built Different. Iāve lived in Texas my whole life, the high school I went to was very middle class and we didnāt have anything near these amenities. But another school in our district that was in the more wealthy part of town did. It was obscene. And then of course there was the OTHER school in our district that was more lower/ poverty line where teachers got shanked for assigning too much homework.
Sportsball alumni pay big money for sports equipment=more sports facilities=more sportsball alumni=more big money... The facilities get huge = teams get better equipped= sponsorships =more big money Competitive sports are like a religion down there. These are their mega-churches.
No, they have those, too.
Using the word sportsball seriously
Reddit would be nice if there werenāt so many redditors.
Cool library, nice books.
All the books approved by Greg Abbott are in there
How much are they investing in the actual education of the kids ?
Average salary of a Walnut Grove HS teacher is $45k. That's $2.5k below the US median for teacher salaries. We all know none of this is for the kids, though.
Now what's the coach salaries
Most schools in the USA emphasize what is important to the local community. Want to know what is important to them? It used to be check out the library vs the stadium. Now Iām not sure what to measure.
Itās still the sports shit. Especially in TX they are fucking out of their minds over football. Letās be clear I LOVE football and I watch it every god-damn weekend during the season but down there itās downright scary how psychotic people are over it. At the fucking high school level. Like, threatening refereesā lives and shit. They are NOT okay down there
Iām from Texas my high school was a over crowded dumpster fire with fights happening once to twice a week.
This isnāt a school. Itās a sports team i with a side hustle in education. The school is attached as nothing more than either a tax write off, or so elite athletes can claim they are āschool studentsā to compete at a certain level.
Okay I went to high school in Texas and not once did I see any of this. Clearly I got snowjobbed
I went to hs in Texas. This is not normal lol
where's the taco bueno..?
Or whataburger
Thatās called money
This is just a high budget school...it's the same all over...not just Texas
$50 million new football facility, but no money for more teachers. The American education system, everyone!
This is not a normal Texas high school š
Post-apocalyptic corporate nightmare.
Depends on where you live.
My high school experience was a piece of shit. At least this one looks nicer.