Rural Texas high school sits at half capacity as town waits for suburban sprawl to reach it

The small town of Prosper, Texas, population 7,000, just opened a $113.5 million, 590,000-square-foot high school. While the school is built for a 2,000 students, it opened with only 850. District officials say that the school will soon fill as families move north from nearby, crowded Dallas suburbs like Frisco and McKinney, Jessica Meyers of the Dallas Morning News reports.

The school has three gyms, one of which is an college-style arena, a 1,000-seat auditorium, four computers and an interactive whiteboard in every classroom, a garage for auto mechanics and a wing dedicated to technical education, Meyers reports. The school isn't just a symbol of growth's march through once mainly rural Collin County, she writes; it is also a source of small-town Texas pride. (Encarta map)

The school district passed a $710 million school construction bond by an 80 percent public vote two years ago, Meyers reports. She quotes Prosper Independent School District Superintendent Drew Watkins: "This is more than bricks and mortar. This is a community facility. This is what the community wanted. And when they say best, they mean best, not just pretty good."

The community's discussion regarding the new high school hasn't ended with its opening. At the time of this posting, 42 comments had been left on Meyer's story, ranging from supportive parents happy that the school had invested in the state-of-the-art facility to tax payers angry that so much development went into the athletic facilities. (Read more)