Fayetteville High School (Arkansas)

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Fayetteville High School
Address
1001 Stone Street US Fayetteville, Arkansas, 72701 USA
Coordinates	36°03′33″N 94°10′25″W / 36.059171, -94.173512
Information
School district	Fayetteville Public Schools
Superintendent	Bobby New
Principal	Jim Price
Assistant principals	Evelyn Marbury David Young Byron Zeagler
Enrollment	Approx. 2,250
Type	Public high school
Grades	10-12
Campus	Urban
Athletics conference	7A West
Mascot	Purple Bulldog
Nickname	The Bulldogs, Purple Dogs
Color(s)	Purple & White
Established	1908
Homepage	School Website

Fayetteville High School is a public high school located in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The school is administered by the Fayetteville Public Schools system.

Contents 1 History 2 Academics 3 Band 4 Publications 5 Athletics 6 Bullying Controversy 7 Notable alumni 8 References 9 External links

[edit] History

The school was first opened in 1908, and its current building was built in 1950, with further renovations made in the 1980s. The current building, built adjacent to the University of Arkansas and just off of a major street, is also located on the Trail of Tears. The only evidence of this are two signs at the road side—one of them a government sign, the other a sign erected by the University. Additional renovations and a new wing on the east side of the building were completed in time for the 1993-94 school year, while further renovations to meet Title IX compliance were done to the secondary gym and locker room around 2001. To meet growing demand for classroom space, the high school took over unused space in what used to be Bates Elementary, which was a building just down the hill. The school also has one of the best TV studios in the country, from which they air the Bulldog Show on Channel 14.

The school was also the first school in Arkansas to voluntarily desegregate, and on September 11, 1954, African American students first attended the high school. The school's marching band was selected to go to the Tournament of Roses Parade for 2006, only the second time an Arkansas band has attended.

[edit] Academics

In 2006, Fayetteville High School was named the 413th best high school in the nation according to the Newsweek magazine's Top 1200 US Schools[1]. Public schools are ranked according to a ratio called the Challenge Index.

[edit] Band

The Fayetteville High School Marching Bulldog Band is under the direction of Barry Harper. The band has marched in many prestigious parades in the past, including the Fiesta Bowl, the Tournament of Roses Parade, the Hollywood Christmas Parade, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which it will attend for the second time in 2008. The band is considered one of the top high school marching bands in Arkansas and consists of over 200 members.

[edit] Publications

In 2005, Connotations, the school's literary magazine, received a Superior award from the National Council of Teachers of English's Program to Recognize Excellence in Student Literary Magazines^[1].

In 1993, 1995, and 1997, Connotations won the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA) Magazine Pacemaker Award^[2]. In 2006, Connotations was placed in the NSPA's Hall of Fame for receiving the highest rating that NSPA awards in its critique service twelve times in the schools' recent history^[3]

In 1994, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association awarded Connotations the CSPA's Scholastic Gold Circle Awards for its Overall Design, Cover Design (Two or More Colors), Title and Contents Page, and Typography.^[4]

[edit] Athletics

The Fayetteville Bulldogs and Lady Bulldogs are highly competitive in the state's largest classification, AAAAAAA, and are members of the West conference of that classification. State championships include^[5]:

• 12-times Boy's Cross Country Running (1965-1986)
• 9-times Girl's Golf (1973-2005)(2006-2007)
• 8-times Girl's Gymnastics (1998-2005)
• 8-times Boy's Tennis (1970-1990)
• 6-times Boy's Golf (1950-2004)
• 3-times Boy's Cross Country Running (1988-2001)
• 4-time Baseball (2003)(2006-2008)
• 2-time Boy's Basketball (1971 AAA)(1987 AAAA & Over-All State Champions)
• 2-time Softball (2006)(2007)
• 1-time Girl's Basketball (1994)
• 1-time Football (2007)
• 1-time Cheerleading (2006)
• 0-time Spirit Squad (2007)

Saturday November 24th, 2007 Fayetteville High School won their first state football championship defeating Springdale Har-Ber 28-7 in Little Rock.

In 2006, Sports Illustrated ranked Fayetteville High School in the nation's Top 20 High School Athletic Programs,^[6] stating:

"Located across the street from the University of Arkansas, this school has won a state-best 24 titles in 10 sports since 1996. The Purple Bulldogs’ girls’ gymnastics team has won eight straight state championships, and the girls’ soccer team took four straight from 1998 to 2001. Since 1996 the boys’ basketball team has made five appearances in the state semifinals ­and went to the title game in March. Fayetteville has also won four state championships in indoor track, which is not a recognized sport in the state. Alum Wallace Spearmon, currently a star at the University of Arkansas, is the top-ranked college 200-meter sprinter in the U.S."

[edit] Bullying Controversy

On March 24, 2008, the New York Times ran an article accusing the administration and teachers of ignoring violence and bullying against Billy Wolfe, a sophomore currently attending Fayetteville High School. After years of abuse, his parents have filed a lawsuit against the one of the bullies, and are considering an additional lawsuit against the district, claiming that their son had been wrongly suspended and accused of being responsible for his own situation by school officials despite evidence that other students were responsible. Some students had set up a Facebook group titled "Every One Hates Billy Wolfe" calling on them to attack him at school. One entry written by a student on March 9, 2007 said ""Haha (your ) Billy got clocked today at school and I think one or two of his teeth got knocked out damn my friends are awesome"."^{[7] [8]}

Fayetteville High School representatives responded by saying that in these types of cases if laws have been violated then the school reports the incident to the Fayetteville Police Department, and complained that the article was "casting our school district in a very bad and undeserved light." However, police records, Wolfe's mother, and Fayetteville Police Department Cpl. Craig Stout said an assault report was eventually filed by the Wolfe family, not the school.^[9][10] Wolfe's mother claims she begged the assistant principal of the school, Byron Zeagler, to call the police. "He said my son got what he deserved." Fayetteville Superintendent Bobby New said "We stand behind our administrators and believe they acted appropriately."^[11] Students at Fayetteville High School, in reaction to perceived bias in the New York Times article, expressed their opinion when being interviewed by the local news. They stated that Wolfe "brings a lot of it on himself, that he actually picks a lot of the fights" and "that what he does, is he antagonizes the other person and starts the fight and when he loses he says 'Oh I got beat up.'" ^[12]Many students, and faculty members, were upset with the fact no one inside the school was asked their opinion or outlook on the Billy Wolfe incident prior to the New York Times article. The Times did very little to get both sides of the story; choosing the Wolfe's claim as a better topic for a sympathetic read. In a local newspaper report the following week, a student with muscular dystrophy claimed that Wolfe "likes to call him names, like stupid or retarded," and "screams in his ear, which is sensitive to noise because of his medical condition…[Wolfe] once pounded him in the back of the head several times with a medium-sized rubber ball." ^[13]Following the story's publication, the Fayetteville School District has reported receiving "terroristic threatening" as both a threatening phone call to McNair Middle School and an email which "suggested the district would be hit with some sort of Internet or computer network attack." ^[14]

A decade ago a student attending Fayetteville High School's Vocational Campus was harassed and beaten for being gay. At that time the administration of Fayetteville School District had promised the office of Civil Rights they would adopt procedures to promote tolerance and respect.^[15] Currently, Fayetteville High School has a Gay-Straight Alliance, which, in 2004 was picketed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church.^[16]

[edit] Notable alumni

• Skip Holtz - Head football coach at East Carolina University
• Ronnie Brewer, UA basketball standout and current member of the Utah Jazz.
• Sarah Caldwell, Class of 1938 (at the age of fourteen) notable American opera conductor and opera company director. 1st woman to conduct the New York Metropolitan Opera.
• Nupur Lala, winner of the 1999 Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee and featured in the hit documentary Spellbound
• Jason Moore, director of Tony Award-winning Broadway show Avenue Q
• Wallace Spearmon, 2006 World Indoor 4x400m relay gold medalist
• Willis Ricketts, Class of 1942, the 1962 Arkansas Republican gubernatorial nominee; Fayetteville pharmacist
• Lt. General Martin Steele, 3-star general, USMC
• Mark Wright, Grammy-winning country music producer ("I Hope You'll Dance," by Lee Ann Womack)
• Miles James, nationally-renown chef and restauranteur
• Michael Brisiel, current member of the NFL's Houston Texans.
• Jimmy Dykes, ESPN analyst

[edit] References

.

  1. ^ http://www.ncte.org/about/awards/student/123526.htm National Council of Teachers of English
  2. ^ http://www.studentpress.org/nspa/ National Scholastic Press Association
  3. ^ http://www.fayar.net/admin/news.htm FHS Literary Magazine Receives National Honor
  4. ^ http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cspa/docs/contests-and-critiques/gold-circle-awards/recipients/index.html CSPA Gold Circle Awards
  5. ^ http://www.ahsaa.org/docs/08SportsRecBook.pdf Arkansas High School Sports Record Book 2008
  6. ^ http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/magazine/05/11/top.high.school0516/ Sports Illustrated 2005 Top High Schools
  7. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html?pagewanted=1&hp
  8. ^ http://nwanews.com/nwat/News/63008/
  9. ^ http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2008/03/24/news/032508fzbullying.txt
 10. ^ http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2008/03/06/news/030708fzcourtbriefs.txt
 11. ^ http://nwanews.com/nwat/News/63472/
 12. ^ http://nwahomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=11387
 13. ^ http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/63772/
 14. ^ http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/63519/
 15. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html?pagewanted=1&hp
 16. ^ http://www.fayar.net/east/teacher.web/finearts/yates/issues/issue_4_december.pdf

[edit] External links

• School Website
• Band Website

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• Fayetteville High School (Arkansas) is at coordinates 36°03′33″N 94°10′25″W / 36.059171, -94.173512 (Fayetteville High School (Arkansas))Coordinates: 36°03′33″N 94°10′25″W / 36.059171, -94.173512 (Fayetteville High School (Arkansas))