Plano Independent School District
Plano Independent School District (PISD or Plano ISD) is a school district in Plano, Texas. Plano ISD also takes students from some areas of Dallas, Richardson, Allen, Murphy, and Parker. [1]
PISD serves 53,000 students and employs 6,500 faculty members spread across 65 schools and 3 special and early education centers. Plano is renowned for its high educational standards. Plano has a massive operating budget of 479 million U.S. dollars. The school district is known throughout the country for its high standards of academic excellence. Accolades are listed on the website.
School in Plano ISD starts in early August instead of after Labor Day. Thus, it also ends in late May instead of in June.
Texas has been trying to make all schools start in September. PISD has been trying to convince Texas to make them an exception.
Plano's high school system
Plano ISD employs an unconventional high school system. In PISD, students in grades nine and ten attend one of five 'high schools', which generally have three middle schools feeding into each. However, students in grades eleven and twelve attend 'senior high schools'. There are three senior high schools in Plano, each with approximately two high school feeders. This leads to incredibly huge graduating classes and overall student populations. At Plano Senior, Plano East, and Plano West, the current student populations are listed as 2344, 2526, and 1879 students, respectively. Each year's graduating class is approximately half of each number. Graduation typically takes place at Reunion Arena in Dallas.
All three of PISD's senior high schools were recently listed in the top 500 of Newsweek's list of 1000 top high schools in America which ranked schools using the ratio of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students in 2004 to the number of graduating seniors. [2] Plano ISD schools reportedly administer more Advanced Placement tests than any other school district west of the Mississippi River.
In the news
On 20 January, 2006, a Hurricane Katrina evacuee enrolled at Plano West Senior High School and his biology teacher discovered what the students have affectionately named "X-fish" - a prehistoric fish - on the school grounds. [3]
On the 9 December, 2005, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, as part of his "War on Christmas" segment, news commentator, Bill O'Reilly falsely claimed that the district had banned students from wearing red and green clothing "because they were Christmas colors" [4]. An attorney from the school district requested a retraction.[5] O'Reilly later retracted his allegation on 20 December.[6] O'Reilly had mistakenly included clothing among the items banned by PISD, while the ongoing lawsuitagainst the district only alleges the banning of red and green plates, napkins and other items brought to the school "winter parties." Prior to the December, 2004 "winter parties, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a Temporary Restraining Order, requiring PISD to lift these restrictions.
In a ruling upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July of 2003, Plano ISD was found to have violated First Amendment rights of parents during public meetings about the implementation of a controversial new math curriculum, "Connected Math". The district briefly considered an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, but instead reached a settlement of $400,000. It is important to note that this was a settlement of the judgment, not the ruling of a First Amendment rights violation by the district. [7]
List of schools
Each household in Plano ISD is zoned to an elementary school, a middle school, a high school, and a senior high school.
Secondary schools
Senior high schools
High schools
- Clark High School
- Jasper High School
- Shepton High School
- Vines High School
- Williams High School
Middle schools
- Armstrong Middle School
- Bowman Middle School
- Carpenter Middle School
- Frankford Middle School
- Haggard Middle School
- Hendrick Middle School
- Murphy Middle School
- Renner Middle School
- Rice Middle School
- Robinson Middle School
- Schimelpfenig Middle School
- Wilson Middle School
K-8 schools
- Special Programs Center
Primary schools
- Aldridge Elementary School (within Richardson city limits)
- Andrews Elementary School
- Barksdale Elementary School
- Bethany Elementary School
- Beverly Elementary School
- Boggess Elementary School
- Brinker Elementary School
- Carlisle Elementary School
- Centennial Elementary School
- Christie Elementary School
- Daffron Elementary School
- Davis Elementary School
- Dooley Elementary School
- Forman Elementary School
- Gulledge Elementary School
- Haggar Elementary School
- Harrington Elementary School
- Haun Elementary School
- Hedgcoxe Elementary School
- Hickey Elementary School
- Hightower Elementary School
- Huffman Elementary School
- Hughston Elementary School
- Hunt Elementary School
- Jackson Elementary School
- Mathews Elementary School
- McCall Elementary School
- Meadows Elementary School
- Memorial Elementary School
- Mendenhall Elementary School
- Miller Elementary School
- Mitchell Elementary School
- Rasor Elementary School
- Saigling Elementary School
- Shepard Elementary School
- Sigler Elementary School
- Skaggs Elementary School
- Stinson Elementary School
- Thomas Elementary School
- Weatherford Elementary School
- Wells Elementary School
- Wyatt Elementary School
Early childhood schools
- Barron Early Childhood School
- Beaty Early Childhood School
- Pearson Early Childhood School
Notes
- ^ "Know Your School District." PISD.edu. Accessed 10 December 2005.
- ^ Kantrowitz, Barbara. "The 1000 Best High Schools in America." Newsweek. 16 May 2005. Accessed 10 December 2005.
- ^ "O'Reilly falsely claimed a Texas school district banned red and green clothing, called move 'fascism'." MediaMatters.org. Accessed 25 December 2005.
- ^ "'Red & Green Clothing Ban' False Rumor". PISD.edu. 12 December 2005. Accessed 25 December 2005.
- ^ Breen, Kim. "O'Reilly: I made mistake". The Dallas Morning News. 21 December 2005. Accessed 25 December 2005.
- ^ Celia J. Chiu, et al. v. Plano Independent School District, et al. Accessed 10 December 2005.