I'm looking for other parents facing the dilema of the new high school. My daughter will be the first 7th grade class there. She is in 5th now. So next year we have to find a temporary school. Her elementary school says they will offer 6th grade but I'm not sure what kind of make-shift building they are going to come up to hold them. I really want to be proud of this school. All I hear are negatives from so many people. Negative about the location (which I love), negative about the kids that will be going there. I know the old Marshal is pretty rough. As far as I can tell there is little if any parent involvement. Our neighborhood has not sent a kid to public junior high or high school since I've lived here. I mean for the last 8 years the kids here either move to Edmond or go to private school. I know most of the kids in my daughters class are planning on going to John Marshal. I fought hard for it and I want my daughter to go there. I don't want it to be anything like the orginal. That scares me to death. I know we will be getting a lot of lower income kids but there will also be 10x the parent involvement. I'm so excited to have a neighborhood school we can be proud of. One the kids can be proud of. I think the kids there now think no one cares so why should they.

One thing to consider.....the new John Marshal will probably be a lot different than the old John Marshal. They're redrawing the boundaries so that only the wealthier areas will be in the Marshal District, while those areas east of Penn will probably be moved to a different high school.

Still, I think it's good to have your reservations. If your daughter has decent grades, you might try to have her apply to Classen School of Advanced Studies....that seems to be the OKC Public School District's best school right now.

There are also charter school options that are turning out to be very good. I hate to toot my own school's horn, but Harding Charter Prep (same building as the old Harding High School and Harding Junior High) is a very good school. We focus more on academics where Classen SAS seems to focus more on the arts. It depends on what you want your child to focus on, but I thought I'd get the word out.

As for the new JM...I don't know. I'm skeptical of most OKC High Schools. Their API's are dismal and I rarely hear anything good. Sure, building a new building is nice, but redistricting is an interesting solution--it's like telling the kids that would be moved "you're not good enough for our new building, you'd just ruin it, you hooligans!" and that's not right...but I know they probably would ruin it, and that's sad.