A "specialty" school tagged onto a normal
public school to allow
gifted students to concentrate their studies in a particular area, as well as in a
positive atmosphere with like-minded teens.
Magnet schools seem to exist at every
grade level.
I believe the term "
magnet" school comes from the school being attached to a normal school. This allows small(~100 student) magnet programs to exist by utilizing the normal high school's elective classes.
Magnet school kids only differ from the regular kids in their
main courses(
English,
Social Studies,
Math,
Science). They go to
gym,
art,
comp sci, etc. alongside kids from the regular school they're part of.
Magnet programs attract students from an entire
county here in the U.S. I have a 20-minute drive to my school despite the fact that another
high school is within
walking distance of my house. Some of my
classmates live up to an hour from school.
One problem this causes is how do you get kids from all over the county to and from school each day? We have significantly fewer bus stops across the county, many of them located at other high schools or libraries. My school may be a 20-minute drive, but the bus took around 45 minutes to get the four or five stops in my area.
What if you have an
after school class,
club,
sport, or other
extra-curricular activity? To make that possible the magnet school buses don't leave until 4:30, two and a half hours after school actually lets out. A huge percentage drive or get rides because of this.
I have to say I enjoyed hanging out at the library after school, or playing
M:TG in the commons with the other losers. But it obviously gets annoying at times.
While the math and science
magnet school I attended had suspiciously few
geeks, the students in the program were all
nerdy enough that there was absolutely no (serious)
teasing or
singling out within the
magnet school. Everyone was nice to everyone, even to the
losers.
Its amazing how much faster classes go when the students are actually
interested in learning.
We have no
class rank or
valedictorian. When you're being compared to the county's top 100 students "top 5%" means a lot more, and "bottom 20%" could still place you in the top 20% of the parent school.
As for feelings between us
Math/Sci magnet school kids and the regular kids at our "parent" school
Clover Hill:
Everyone gets along just fine. Like I said we have suprisingly few
geeks and
uber geeks in our
magnet school; Its hard for the "normal" kids to make fun of
math/sci when several of their friends are in the program. There is a lot of
gentle ribbing among friends, but no serious issues.