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1 hour ago, Footballking16 said:

I've heard "talks" for a few years about a potential third Fishers high school but nothing substantiated.

I reckon we're still a ways out but I wouldn't be surprised to see Lawrence go to a 1 township high school here in the distant future. Consolidate LN and LC at around 3500-4000 students. Sooner or later Mount Vernon is going to get a fair amount of those kids as Hancock county continues to grow. 

Agree on Whitestown. Zionsville will take as many kids until they can't anymore and then it will likely force Lebanon to build a bigger high school. 

From what I've read, the plan for a third HSE district high school will be something like what Ben Davis has with University High. It will be a separate building with kids from both school populations, but its own specialized school and curriculum, but its students would be considered enrolled in (and thus eligible for athletics for) their "home" school - which would be HSE or Fishers. 

Lawrence Township is largely built-out, but both LC and LN are expanding. My son has played soccer games at both schools in the last few weeks and both have major construction going on, so it doesn't look like they'll be consolidating soon. I think you're more likely to see that in Perry Township. They had floated the idea of consolidating Perry Meridian and Southport a few years back, but the new football stadium at Perry Meridian seems to have nixed that idea. 

Mt. Vernon is already getting spillover from both Lawrence Township and HSE - they're adding about 300 students/year district-wide. I expect this to be their last cycle as a 4A school. New Pal is growing, but because Franklin Township and the parts of Warren Township it borders aren't quite as built-out yet, there's not as much growth crossing the county line (although they can't build houses fast enough here). 

 

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1 hour ago, Footballking16 said:

Why?

Is it a foregone conclusion that Faith Christian will never field a football team? I would say the biggest precursor to starting a football program is a growing enrollment. It took Covenant Christian almost 20 years to field their first varsity team. And it coincided with an enrollment spike. 

Exactly. 

I grew up in the evangelical school community - I went to Bethesda Christian in elementary school and two of my siblings graduated from there, and was attending church at Traders Point when Covenant Christian began (largely to serve the kids in the Chapel Rock, Kingsway and Traders Point congregations - the three very large westside Independent Christian Churches). 

Most of the evangelical Protestant Christian schools are Baptist (but there are a couple of Christian Church-affiliated ones - Covenant and Traders Point in the Indy area). For years, none had football and it seemed to be - at least in the circles I ran in - that it really wasn't part of the church culture. I always thought soccer was the "church kid" sport because that was the featured fall sport at every evangelical school I was aware of. 

Then Heritage Christian started a program. Lutheran - which was more established as a school and obviously comes from a mainline denomination, but was still very small at the time and seemed to be an athletic peer of many of the evangelical schools - started one. Then Covenant and Traders Point. All have been very good for the visibility of the school and have led to enrollment jumps. Heritage, Lutheran and Covenant have all won state titles. Traders Point now sits in Whitestown, right there to absorb some of the religious families in the area. 

There could come a day when Faith Christian - which is a Baptist school - starts football. But it and LCC are *not* pulling from the same families. Faith's students are most likely to be from evangelical families. LCC's students are most likely to come from Catholic ones. There might be some overlap between "voucher" families who simply want their kids to have a private school education, but I'd think it's fairly small. 

We're probably more likely to see a new program from an existing school - like a Faith Christian or Covenant Christian-Demotte - than we are to see a new school created out of nowhere (or an 8-man program like Waldron bumping up to 11-man). It seems the wave of new charter schools has slowed, schools seem to be slow to split (if they split) because the cost of building a new high school and all of the attendant facilities (new stadium, gym, baseball field, softball field, soccer field, auditorium, natatorium) is *substantial.*

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18 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

Fishers started a new program when they opened the new Fishers High School in 2007. What are you talking about?

Fishers and all the schools I mentioned had a football team and practiced as a team before 1 class was ever taught. That's what I'm talking about. It's not a personal beef, it's facts.

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14 minutes ago, Warren Central Warrior said:

I wonder if there ever will be a new high school in Warren Township?

Highly doubt it. There is room for growth - a few new neighborhoods going in around Mitthoeffer/German Church near Creston (but it seems a not-insignificant number of those families send their kids to New Pal or to Scecina/Roncalli/Cathedral). I can't see WC splitting the high school. The time to do that would've been 20-25 years ago when the school's enrollment was really growing fast. It's growing still, but not quite at that level. Warren Township also doesn't have the tax base Washington & Lawrence Townships have - the infrastructure for a new high school would be pretty astronomical. It's easier and cheaper to add on (and in doing so, you ensure you're still competitive with the Ben Davises and Carmels). 

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2 minutes ago, crimsonace1 said:

Highly doubt it. There is room for growth - a few new neighborhoods going in around Mitthoeffer/German Church near Creston (but it seems a not-insignificant number of those families send their kids to New Pal or to Scecina/Roncalli/Cathedral). I can't see WC splitting the high school. The time to do that would've been 20-25 years ago when the school's enrollment was really growing fast. It's growing still, but not quite at that level. Warren Township also doesn't have the tax base Washington & Lawrence Townships have - the infrastructure for a new high school would be pretty astronomical. It's easier and cheaper to add on (and in doing so, you ensure you're still competitive with the Ben Davises and Carmels). 

Warren Central is under construction right now. Like you said Andrew, far cheaper 

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25 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Fishers and all the schools I mentioned had a football team and practiced as a team before 1 class was ever taught. That's what I'm talking about. It's not a personal beef, it's facts.

Lol. 

The Fishers High School football team exists because of the new Fishers High School. Period.

Citing Fishers practicing in the summer before the official start date of class isn’t the “got ya” you think it is. 

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22 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

John Marshall was there until 1986.

He was referring to where Mithoeffer T's into Prospect. Creston is just East of that point. Marshall is at 38th and Mitthoefer; 6 miles from Creston

There was some conversation about a 2nd school even when I was at WC. I still believe a number of school districts in Indy looked at Lawrence Township schools.....and the struggle of the athletic teams at that time to decide they would not add an additional school. 

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1 minute ago, Irishman said:

He was referring to where Mithoeffer T's into Prospect. Creston is just East of that point. Marshall is at 38th and Mitthoefer; 6 miles from Creston

There was some conversation about a 2nd school even when I was at WC. I still believe a number of school districts in Indy looked at Lawrence Township schools.....and the struggle of the athletic teams at that time to decide they would not add an additional school. 

Where did the kids from the Marshall district end up? Lawrence? I worked in that area in the late 70’s-early 80’s

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57 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

John Marshall was there until 1986.

John Marshall is at 38th and Mitthoeffer - about six miles north and in the IPS district (IPS basically stretches along 38th Street like a finger all the way east almost to German Church Road). Its presence likely didn't affect Warren Central's student population at all - until open enrollment when families in that area could choose to go to Warren or Lawrence Township schools. 

The students who would have went to John Marshall are now districted to other IPS high schools (likely Tech, as it's the closest IPS building). 

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27 minutes ago, Irishman said:

He was referring to where Mithoeffer T's into Prospect. Creston is just East of that point. Marshall is at 38th and Mitthoefer; 6 miles from Creston

There was some conversation about a 2nd school even when I was at WC. I still believe a number of school districts in Indy looked at Lawrence Township schools.....and the struggle of the athletic teams at that time to decide they would not add an additional school. 

Lawrence North was a basketball powerhouse almost from the beginning - and won a state title (the first for a Marion County township school) in its 13th year of existence. 

But if you looked and saw Lawrence North largely upstaging Lawrence Central athletically, and Perry Meridian was probably equal to or better than Southport for a long time (although Southport *did* make a basketball State Finals in 1990), you're thinking "if we split the school, the new school with no history and tradition will be the good one, and the old one with 100 years of alumni will struggle," maybe you step back and say "yeah, let's keep it one school." 

If any township made sense to split, it was Lawrence, just because of how rapidly the Castleton/Geist areas were growing in the 1970s/80s. North Central would seem like a decent candidate (but a large portion of Washington Township resides in the IPS district), but it's fascinating to note that school didn't even exist until 1955. Before then, Washington Township kids who didn't live in the old city limits, I think, had the option to go to IPS or go to Pike/Lawrence Central (and I assume most went to Broad Ripple). 

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59 minutes ago, crimsonace1 said:

Exactly. 

I grew up in the evangelical school community - I went to Bethesda Christian in elementary school and two of my siblings graduated from there, and was attending church at Traders Point when Covenant Christian began (largely to serve the kids in the Chapel Rock, Kingsway and Traders Point congregations - the three very large westside Independent Christian Churches). 

Most of the evangelical Protestant Christian schools are Baptist (but there are a couple of Christian Church-affiliated ones - Covenant and Traders Point in the Indy area). For years, none had football and it seemed to be - at least in the circles I ran in - that it really wasn't part of the church culture. I always thought soccer was the "church kid" sport because that was the featured fall sport at every evangelical school I was aware of. 

Then Heritage Christian started a program. Lutheran - which was more established as a school and obviously comes from a mainline denomination, but was still very small at the time and seemed to be an athletic peer of many of the evangelical schools - started one. Then Covenant and Traders Point. All have been very good for the visibility of the school and have led to enrollment jumps. Heritage, Lutheran and Covenant have all won state titles. Traders Point now sits in Whitestown, right there to absorb some of the religious families in the area. 

There could come a day when Faith Christian - which is a Baptist school - starts football. But it and LCC are *not* pulling from the same families. Faith's students are most likely to be from evangelical families. LCC's students are most likely to come from Catholic ones. There might be some overlap between "voucher" families who simply want their kids to have a private school education, but I'd think it's fairly small. 

We're probably more likely to see a new program from an existing school - like a Faith Christian or Covenant Christian-Demotte - than we are to see a new school created out of nowhere (or an 8-man program like Waldron bumping up to 11-man). It seems the wave of new charter schools has slowed, schools seem to be slow to split (if they split) because the cost of building a new high school and all of the attendant facilities (new stadium, gym, baseball field, softball field, soccer field, auditorium, natatorium) is *substantial.*

LCC's youth program has traditionally had kids from Faith Christian and St. James Lutheran since neither of those schools have football as well as some homeschool kids.  Almost all of the Faith Christian kids depart the youth program by the end of the 6th grade season.  Some return to Faith and head over to soccer and/or baseball as their high school sports and some head off to play football at the public schools, departing the Faith program.  I would venture that very few, if any, Faith kids attend LCC for high school.

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52 minutes ago, crimsonace1 said:

IPS district (IPS basically stretches along 38th Street like a finger all the way east almost to German Church Road).

I see that after looking at the district map. That is strange how it extends that far. There are even little 'islands', one IPS in the cradle of 70 and 465, and IPS surrounds 2 other very small areas there that are not IPS. I wonder how and why those lines came about that far into Warren and Lawrence townships?

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6 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

I see that after looking at the district map. That is strange how it extends that far. There are even little 'islands', one IPS in the cradle of 70 and 465, and IPS surrounds 2 other very small areas there that are not IPS. I wonder how and why those lines came about that far into Warren and Lawrence townships?

IPS district = the old pre-Unigov Indianapolis city limits. The township schools' districts consist of any land outside of those limits (obviously, except the enclave towns of Speedway and Beech Grove, whose districts correspond with their town boundaries). Why Indy stretched so far along 38th Street was likely because that area was developed and the city annexed it for tax base. It stretches pretty far in a narrow finger (although not quite as far) along 38th Street on the west side into Pike & Wayne Townships, too. 

There have been multiple proposals to merge the township schools and IPS over the years, since schools, police and fire were excluded from the Unigov city-county unification (police has since consolidated into one department, *some* fire departments have and some, like Pike, have remained independent of IFD), but the schools have steadfastly been able to remain independent. Given the size of all eight of the township districts, I don't think there's any momentum to merge them into IPS. 

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1 hour ago, crimsonace1 said:

John Marshall is at 38th and Mitthoeffer - about six miles north and in the IPS district (IPS basically stretches along 38th Street like a finger all the way east almost to German Church Road). Its presence likely didn't affect Warren Central's student population at all - until open enrollment when families in that area could choose to go to Warren or Lawrence Township schools. 

The students who would have went to John Marshall are now districted to other IPS high schools (likely Tech, as it's the closest IPS building). 

I was in HS when Marshall closed (abruptly in 85 or 86 if I remember correctly).  Many of the students were sent to Arlington.  There was a lot of violence since they were rivals and most were upset and forced to attend.  At Mt. Vernon we received a lot of transfers when the violence broke out at Arlington.

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7 hours ago, DumfriesYMCA said:

Was just thinking about how some schools are projected to move up to higher enrollment classes and it got me thinking a little bit. 
 

a lot of states have 400/500/600+ schools with football programs.  Indiana is sitting at around 325-350…somewhere in there.  
 

we have schools pushing 5000 kids if not more

 

Are there any new high schools being built/proposed? At some point there will have to be new schools made to be able to take in the ever increasing population

New public schools will most likely have a football program. New Private ones-probably not. 

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17 hours ago, DumfriesYMCA said:

Ironically it’s probably the same people who love to use the voucher program to their benefit. 


why foot the bill for a tax increase for a better school when you have open enrollment and vouchers and can just opt in to a better school.

 

the freedom of choice in education can be a wonderful thing but I’m sure there have been a number of schools who have suffered because of it 

The simple answer to these "suffering" government schools is "get better or get used to it."

 

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