Schools

[KCMax]

Where would/do you send your kids to school if you lived in KCMO?

[Boognish]

If money was no object, Pembroke Hill. I wish those words weren't coming out of my mouth, but there it is. It's true. (And bear in mind I'm a KCMO school grad!)

[Maitre D]

Pembroke.

Perhaps St. Teresa's. 

After that, I'd prefer to home school them, or perhaps let them just spend 8 hours a day on the internet.  They'd learn more, and be out of harm's way.

[AllThingsKC]

I'm just wondering.....if a teen lived in the DT loop (Quailty Hill), where would they go to high school?   I've been trying to figure that one out! 

[sethyg]

I'm just wondering.....if a teen lived in the DT loop (Quailty Hill), where would they go to high school?   I've been trying to figure that one out! 

Northeast High?

[KCPowercat]

University Academy looked nice.

[Boognish]

I'm just wondering.....if a teen lived in the DT loop (Quailty Hill), where would they go to high school?   I've been trying to figure that one out! 

Probably Northeast or my alma mater, Lincoln Prep.

[KCMax]

Tell me more about Lincoln Prep - that's the one that seems to be one of the better schools in KC.

[omenapt]

The way Americans casually accept the current state of urban public school systems is appalliing and to continue to accept the status quo poses the biggest threat to our national security and stability one can ever imagine.
It's time to cut thru the PC BS and get to work educating all kids in acceptable manner and if they dont conform to behavioral/scholastic standards, then less rewarding options might be available to them!
I think rather radical approaches and somewhat unpallitable options are what will be in store , eventually.. You cannot, in a democratic society, allow half your population to become un-educated!
Doubt me?watch how things develope over next 10-20 years.Infact ,some of the problems are with us now(urban gangs, drugs, crime and basic lawlessness)

[Tosspot]

^ Agreed, and also due to this and other factors in play, we may end up seeing a new class of citizen in the US, known as the Formerly Middle Class, at least as far as upward mobility is concerned.

[dangerboy]

Where would/do you send your kids to school if you lived in KCMO?

Center, Park Hill, Oak Park, Liberty, Raytown, or Lee's Summit West, all of which do serve parts of the KCMO city limits.

Unless you are implying this the part of the city served by the KCMO School District?  In that case, there are many excellent elementary schools.  Lincoln Prep is an excellent high school.  There are also lots of good Catholic schools like Rockhurst, St. Theresa's, O'Hara, etc.

[shinatoo]

Center, Park Hill, Oak Park, Liberty, Raytown, or Lee's Summit West, all of which do serve parts of the KCMO city limits.

Unless you are implying this the part of the city served by the KCMO School District?  In that case, there are many excellent elementary schools.  Lincoln Prep is an excellent high school.  There are also lots of good Catholic schools like Rockhurst, St. Theresa's, O'Hara, etc.

Sorry to be technical but LS west only serves about 10 homes in KC proper. KC south of Longview lake as far east as Hook is in the Grandview School District. LS North serves a lot of homes in KC around the Unity Village area.

Bill Kenny is building a new subdivision between Pryor and Hook that will LS West with KC Addresses. That will probably be my new neighborhood in a couple of years.

[Boognish]

Tell me more about Lincoln Prep - that's the one that seems to be one of the better schools in KC.

Sorry for the slow response. I went there from my sophomore year on, spending my freshman year in a very strange suburban school district before transferring back home to Kansas City. The quality of instruction was, in retrospect, excellent - quality, experienced, caring teachers qualified to do their jobs and with a tough lot to sell. The facility was awful, and most of the student body had the callous indifference of someone who expects life to leave them behind. (I hate to put it that way, but it's true.) However, the remaining students were simply amazing! Smartest high schoolers I have ever met went to that school - dedicated, diverse, and interesting - very motivated. I compare this to the  suburban school where I spent my freshman year, where everyone just seemed to carry themselves with a bland sense of general entitlement. It's kind of gross when I think back on them, particularly when (compared to the students at Lincoln) I realize how really, really good these kids had it.

At Lincoln, we had to enter through a metal detector to get into the building. Most students were treated with hostility, and they gladly returned the favor. It's very interesting how that relationship works. However, that metal detector gave me the motivation to find 3 different ways I could sneak into the school without going through it, and I succeeded in finding 6 or so. Also interesting how borders encourage high school kids to find ways around them, something I never would have thought about otherwise.

I played football there, and the entire KC school district has I believe 3 football fields to their name - Center, Southwest, and maybe one other that I can't remember. They were in shoddy shape and no parents came to see us play. Nevertheless, it was a lot more fun, laid back atmosphere than at the suburban school. The pressure of sports success wasn't nearly as tremendous, and there was a huge amount of emphasis on having fun, and maybe showing off a little. I used to joke that I would never play organized sports with white people again.  Whether we won or lost, we always went to the old Shoney's all night breakfast buffet on Raytown Road to have a good time afterwards. Some of my best memories.

Though by the same token, when we left football games, we were required to put our helmets on while in the bus, and put our heads down in case someone tried to shoot at the bus. (This, ironically, was based on an event in Olathe.) It was ludicrous, of course. No one was going to shoot at the bus because absolutely NO-ONE cared who had won. I remember basketball being a little more competitive.

All in all, there was a lot of talent in Lincoln Prep, but not always a lot of hope. These kids were mostly treated like crap most of their lives, and many of them carried themselves with an "us against them" attitude, often all they knew. It was unfortunate, because almost to a single one of them, they were very, very bright. You have to test into the school, after all. Eddie Griffin used to come and do pep rallies (his alma mater too) to encourage kids that life held for them what they could take advantage of, and it sometimes worked, but it wasn't often enough. This was pre-18th and vine projects (or right at the beginning of them) and the surrounding neighborhood was just stunning, filled to the brim with the ghosts of the past and rarely disturbed by the present. I used to walk down the street to Arthur Bryant's, which at the time also had an ice cream stand and, believe it or not, a seafood stand next to it. The smell range was incredible - the school during a certain period of the day would smell exactly like rancid McDonald's (the smell of the industrial incinerator from the Budweiser bottling plant next door.) As you walked down the street, you would occasionally smell what I believe was from a tar plant nearby, then replaced by the overwhelming sweet smell that Bryant's puts off. My memories of the place are very distinct in this regard.

I had only one negative experience over three years time, and that was the first time I got on the bus for a football game (it was actually a home game, but since we didn't have our own field, every game was essentially a road game), as a sophomore. I didn't really have many friends at this point, and I had to find a place to sit on a bus where (myself included) there were exactly two white guys. I just picked a seat randomly, and the quiet senior who I never even knew his name made it pretty clear that he wished I would move somewhere else. At first I thought he was joking, so I nervously laughed. He not-so-politely pointed out that he wasn't joking, and threatened physical violence. At this point, two of my teammates (also seniors) came to my aid, threatening to perpetrate bodily harm on him if he didn't acquiesce. He got up and went to sit elsewhere, and one of the two guys who stuck up for me took the seat next to me so I wouldn't feel left out. I never really got the chance to say this, but Dave and Arthur - thank you. Pretty tame, eh? It was more of a racial tension thing than an actual violence thing, but I remember realizing how bad it felt and how hard it was to cope with because to one guy I was the enemy, and in a lot of ways, I couldn't argue with him. He thought it was presumptuous of me to sit next to him, and maybe he was right - who knows? He didn't know me from Adam, but to him, I was white, and that was bad news. And even though I obviously couldn't agree, because I wished no ill will towards him at all, how was I supposed to argue? It's the sort of thing I think about when I see lily-white rich folks profess their total color-blindness and their love of all mankind. It's easy to be tolerant towards everyone when you only know people exactly like yourself. But I digress.

Also, a freshman when I was a senior taught me to do the "white boy victory dance" after touchdowns. He was a backup quarterback named Michael Watson, who went on to transfer to Central and be a pretty big basketball star at UMKC. He was a funny guy - not a great football player, though, for being such a great athlete. I was a pretty good player, and he used to joke about my being our Larry Bird. I argued that I was more our Kurt Rambis, a joke anyone familiar with the 1980s NBA will get. Yeah, and I wore those goofy goggles for a while, too.

Anyway, that's my story.

[KCMax]

Hmmmm....not a ringing endorsement.

[omenapt]

I was about to say the same thing, KC MAX..that doesnt sound like the kind of high school experience many parents envision for their kids, and whats up with bashing all these white suburban kids??  So, if your not some kinda tough-assed thug, then you got some kinda snotty attitude?  WTF?

[troostwood]

I get the feeling that despite the ongoing woes of the KCSD, the school situation in Kansas City generally, and even the central city particularly, is looking better.

First, regarding gradeschools -- there are decent, safe, good grade schools in Kansas City, Mo., and not just in the affluent suburbs like L.S. and the Northland. 

Check these out:
Brookside Day School
Academy Lafayette
The Catholic Schools
University Academy
The KCMO School District Grade Schools in Independence and Sugar Creek. (I can't remember the names.)

For high school you've got:

The elite schools (Pembroke and the one way out south.)
The elite Catholic high schools (Rockhurst, Sion, etc.)
The regular Catholic high schools (Bishop Miege, etc.)
The University Academy.
Lincoln Prep.

Also, they are planning on openign a new Catholic high-school designed to serve people who can't afford regular Catholic schools at Linwood and Main in the former Redemptorist High School building. This high school and the University Academy are pretty exciting. Both focus on academics, to the exclusion of all the other H.S. B.S. Both will have serious financial backing. Both are in the middle of the city. It will literally be two new high schools in less than five (?) years opening in the city that I would send a kid to. I know a lot of folks between 50 and 60 who remember going to high school in Kansas City proper are excited about these school and are getting in line to volunteer time and $$$. 

[Boognish]

I was about to say the same thing, KC MAX..that doesnt sound like the kind of high school experience many parents envision for their kids, and whats up with bashing all these white suburban kids??  So, if your not some kinda tough-assed thug, then you got some kinda snotty attitude?  WTF?

That's really not at all what I meant. I really liked it there, I apologize if that's not what came across. I edited the posts to make the pronoun usage a little more clear - I should have proofread it before I posted it. I think if you read it through again, it will make more sense.

Granted, it's probably not the experience that most parents want for their kids, but honestly, I would rather have this experience twenty times than say, an Olathe East experience once. Things that are just abstractions make a lot more sense and convey a little bit more empathy and realism when seen up close. And like I've said, I was never in any real danger.

[kcdcchef]

i heard paseo academy was pretty decent, is that a lie?