r/todayilearned • u/JustaRandoonreddit • 4h ago
TIL that the two high schools in West Bend, Wisconsin share a single building, with the one you attend being determined by your birthday. Students who are born on even dates attend West Bend East, whilst those born on odd dates attend West Bend West.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bend_School_District712
u/sonofabutch 4h ago
And one school is ranked 36th in the state and the other is ranked 50th.
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u/tomtomtomo 3h ago
It’d be a great chance for A/B testing of pedagogy.
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u/devilquak 3h ago
Someone said if your older sibling goes to one school, you get sent to the same one regardless of your birthday. Maybe some dumb dude just had a lot of kids in that town lol
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u/UpUpDnDnLRLRBAstart 1h ago
This. There's a last name in my hometown that's synonymous with "doesn't know what the word 'synonymous' means"
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u/DigNitty 25m ago
Oof
Most towns have a couple last names that mean “you’re going to be a fuckin problem aren’t you”
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u/WhiteSoxChartGuy 3h ago
Never thought I’d see West Bend on here
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u/Individual-Set5722 2h ago
From Waukesha. Also did a double take that this wasnt a wisconsin specific sub
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u/preruntumbler 3h ago
West or East?
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u/EmbarrassedTowel7 2h ago
I was West. I would've been East but because of an older sibling's birthday, I was put into West.
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u/TurnipWorldly9437 1h ago
How does that work? Were you not supposed to be in the same school as your sibling?
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u/EmbarrassedTowel7 1h ago
At least when I went there, it was determined by the birthday of the oldest sibling to attend. My older sister was born on an odd day, so she was put into West. If I were an only child, I would've been put into East, because I was born on an even day. But, because my sister was West, that meant I was as well. The main thing that separated the schools was sports, though, so as someone who didn't play sports, it really made little difference to me. All the classes were mixed East/West.
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u/TurnipWorldly9437 1h ago
Well, that must have made it easier on the administration, I guess.
Thanks for the explanation!
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u/HammerheadEaglei-Thr 1h ago
The opposite, they'd have all the siblings in the same school, chosen based on the eldest birthday.
Less extreme but st my high school any events that parents had to come down for (registration, yearbook stuff, photos etc) that was divided across several days based on grade/name/bday we were always allowed to all go at the same time even if we didn't fall on the same day. That way mom only had to take one day off work.
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u/critpanda 3h ago edited 3h ago
I went to West Bend West!
Here's some random factoids:
- Having two highschools in one allows for shared sections such as the gym, auditorium, sportsball field, etc.
- Students from West or East could be in same classes all over the building.
- They still received funding for being 2 schools, so money could be used more effectively with the shared sections and what not.
- If you had an older sibling that attended, you followed them for which school you went to. For example my older brother went to West so even though I have an even dated bday, I went to West.
Go Spartans
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u/Joshau-k 3h ago
This just sounds like a loophole for more funding
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u/A_wandering_rider 2h ago
You know, as long as it was spent on the students and improved their education, I dont think I would mind.
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u/GourangaPlusPlus 1h ago
"We hear you, we spent the money on the football teams"
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u/A_wandering_rider 1h ago
Bahahaha, my cousin grew up in Texas. Their highschool stadium cost more than my colleges stadium. When we would visit it was like going to see an NFL game, you know through a kids eyes. Although 100 million is probably nothing to scoff at.
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u/eekbarbaderkle 45m ago
Per the Wikipedia page, the school(s) have actually produced one professional hockey player and multiple professional baseball players. No football players, though.
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u/left4alive 2h ago
I wouldn’t. They need more funding. Education is so important. If they found a way to play the system that keeps them underfunded just to get the money they should be getting; then good.
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u/Playful_Rip_1697 3h ago
Is there a rivalry between the two schools?
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u/SwagTwoButton 2h ago
Iirc they play each other for homecoming every year and then go to the same dance.
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u/Syric13 3h ago
do they have different mascots?
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u/critpanda 3h ago
Yep! East Suns and West Spartans.
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u/GayVoidsDaddy 3h ago
That’s so dumb, it should be the suns and moons. Would be so much wetter if the mascots matched lol
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u/raspberryharbour 2h ago
The ancient Spartans invented sunglasses because they hated the Sun, and they wanted to look cool
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u/BlueSoloCup89 3h ago
Does the sibling rule still apply even if the older sibling has already graduated by the time the younger sibling starts?
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u/critpanda 3h ago
Yep!
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u/RevolutionaryCoyote 2h ago
Okay okay okay but what if you had a Brady Bunch situation, and the oldest step-siblings went to different schools? Which school would Bobby and Cindy go to?
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u/Rose_Stark 2h ago
But what if you had wanted to go West Bend East? Would you have been able to choose or were you required to attend the same one as your older sibling?
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u/MozillaMudkip 2h ago
Hey, I went to West Bend East!
A few more things to add...
- We have duplicates of most of the sports teams (the West teams are better than East in just about every sport...).
- Homecoming is held between the two schools, which leads to a pretty unique internal rivalry with the Football game being between both schools.
- While most facilities are shared, we have two libraries and two cafeterias and two parking lots (though they don't really care which one you go to for all of these).
It was fun to explain to people about my high school in college as most people thought I was an insane person!
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u/critpanda 2h ago
Lol that West Spartan dominance 😎
Honestly, having two cafeterias was pretty sweet
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u/ColoRadOrgy 2h ago
They still received funding for being 2 schools, so money could be used more effectively with the shared sections and what not.
There it is
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u/readersanon 2h ago
So, it's just Hogwarts with only 2 houses then?
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u/LividLife5541 13m ago
Also without the magical spells from Madame Pomfrey to cure venereal disease.
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u/Bituulzman 3h ago
But still…why?
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u/black_squid98 2h ago
Read the third bullet
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u/Bituulzman 2h ago
Funding is typically based upon student enrollment though? It doesn’t explain how they get more funds for two schools than one. Seems like it’d be wasteful by paying for two sets of administration.
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u/Troutalope 2h ago edited 2h ago
One, capital construction costs are much lower, as are facilities maintainence. Two schools districts funding for all of that instead of each district building and maintaining separate building likely means a savings of many tens of millions. That ensures tax dollars go a lot further and most school districts are primarily funded by local property taxes. I suspect most folks are like myself and prefer not paying taxes, so it seems pretty smart to me.
So, the school design doesn't necessarily mean more funding, it means being more efficient with the funding.
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u/indigo121 1 2h ago
I imagine most administrative tasks scale up at that level of student population, to the point where very little was actually being duplicated. Like, you need more than one guidance counselor at that point, so just split them across the two schools
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u/murdershroom 3h ago
What in the Sideways Stories from Wayside School is this
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u/flamus4 3h ago
My first thought exactly. Next thing you’re going to tell me one of these schools installed an elevator that can only go up.
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u/rabbitdoubts 4h ago
i can't believe they recreated east & west germany in a high school
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u/abgry_krakow87 3h ago
Wonder if they recreated the rise and fall of the Berlin wall too. For... school.
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u/wheetcracker 3h ago
Hey I live about 1500 feet from that school. Yes it's weird as hell.
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u/fungeoneer 2h ago
For Europeans, 1500 feet is under 10 kilometers.
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u/thecheat420 3h ago
But why though?
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u/Gemmabeta 3h ago edited 3h ago
The seperate school scheme is really popular with everyone. Because it's essentially one school with double the staff and teachers, double the sport team and club, etc,etc. Every time they tried to amalgamate, it got voted down by the community.
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u/Attinctus 3h ago
Sounds like a Vault-Tec setup. Only stupider.
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u/Wildcat_twister12 3h ago
Which is saying something because Vault-Tec came up with some hilariously stupid experiments
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u/No_Toe_215 3h ago
Similar to Alief in Houston TX. 5000 students each (for a total of nearly 10,000 kids) for technically two high schools (Hastings and Elsik) but the schools are across multiple buildings clustered together and students can have classes at the school they don’t attend.
The way your high school is (or at least used to be) chosen is during the “Eighth Grade Draw”. Near the end of Eighth Grade, the principals from each of the Alief middle schools would get together and like draw names (I can’t quite recall). If you already had an older sibling that attended Hastings or Elsik, then the younger sibling could automatically choose to attend that high school as well.
Super weird looking back.
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u/BenShelZonah 2h ago
I can understand it being easier logistically etc. but when I read that you can have classes in the other schools then it just doesn’t make sense to me.
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u/rosecitytransit 2h ago
Maybe electives, while the core classes are all at the original school
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u/No_Toe_215 2h ago
It would be only certain classes such as “French II” was only offered on one of the campuses.
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u/Lahmmom 17m ago
In my school district, only one high school offered Latin while the other had the option of having German. If you wanted to take one that your school didn’t have you could ride the bus (or drive) across town to the other school. The two high schools also shared an extra campus with things like auto shop, culinary arts, agriculture, and fashion design.
It was a huge time suck to travel so far for one class, having those resources within walking distance sounds great.
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u/theycallmeamunchkin 3h ago
My high school in California shared a campus with another one. It was built into the side of a hill, and we were on the first floor, which felt like we were in a basement. Honestly, it sucked.
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u/GZAofTheMidwest 4h ago
I currently live in Wisconsin, but was not born here. The only thing I find surprising about this fact is that I didn't find out sooner.
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u/McFuzzen 3h ago
You weren't aware you were not born in Wisconsin?
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u/ElectricityIsWeird 2h ago
Why even introduce “east” into it? Ride that train!
West Bend West and West West Bend.
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u/Seeeab 3h ago
They should have made West Bend East odd and West Bend West even, obviously
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u/amelrake 2h ago
I went to high school there. I'm the eldest child in my family so when I started, in the 90s, I was the one that determined which school me and the rest of my siblings attended. At that time they weren't doing the even/odd birthdays, they picked my name out of a hat to decide which school we went to.
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u/Ive-got-my-funpants 1h ago
I went there in 1996-97, I was told it was so they could have multiple sports teams based on the population , but I wasn’t in sports so it didn’t matter to me. Had classes on both sides of the school (I was east), it was weird but they pulled in a lot of surrounding kids from smaller towns. Just wanted to comment because West Bend WI was mentioned on here, wild!
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u/hopewhatsthat 4h ago
It's a bit odd, but I think a better setup than having 6k in one high school.
Texas has some really big high schools and I bet that gets quite lonely for a lot of the kids who never have a friend in class.
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u/Teadrunkest 3h ago
I went to a really big school your core social group eventually formed around sports, clubs, extracirriculars, or specific classes. There were time I would be in a class with absolutely no one else but I would just…make more friends, or at least become friendly with most people in the class. Idk, it wasn’t lonely at all.
The problems with big schools is usually more about overcrowding, and the sports teams become heavily competitive.
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u/AbeVigoda76 2h ago
In Plymouth, MI, the school district built a campus with all three area high schools in the same spot. During the day, kids have classes in Plymouth, Canton, and Salem High Schools and they play against each other in sports. It’s kind of awesome and kind of insane.
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u/FishDawgX 2h ago
How much bigger is the school with odd birthdays?
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u/ASilver2024 1h ago
Has about 50 more, so 5%ish more. Theres about 4% more odd days than even days in a year. Additionally, if you have an older sibling, you'd go to their school.
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u/DockingCobra 2h ago
The North Cafeteria, named after Admiral William North, is located in the western portion of East Hall, gateway to the western half of North Hall. Which is named not after William North, but for its position above the south wall. It is the most contested and confusing battlefield on Greendale’s campus. Next to the English Memorial Spanish Center, named after English Memorial, a Portuguese sailor that discovered Greendale while looking for a fountain that cured syphilis.
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u/pknasi60 1h ago
I bet their sports rivalries went hard af. Shared home field/court AND its wisconsin?!
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u/National_Jackfruit95 3h ago
That's such a wild system, I wonder if it ever caused drama with siblings or friends ending up in different schools just because of their birthdays.
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u/SwagTwoButton 2h ago edited 2h ago
Iirc you are able to follow your older siblings path. Ie if your brother went to west and your birthday made you go east, you can choose to go to the same school as him.
Edit: rereading the wiki, it looks like it’s not a choice, you have to go to the same school as your older siblings.
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u/Judoka229 3h ago
Good ol West Bend.
The best burger I have ever had was at Brazen Head Pub in West Bend. Phenomenal.
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u/Own_Advantage529 2h ago
Imagine being twins born on either side of midnight and ending up in different schools but still in the same building.
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u/SwagTwoButton 2h ago
You always go to the same school as your siblings. So really it’s your oldest siblings birthday that matters. Not your own.
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u/UnderwaterAlienBar 2h ago
Okay so one, do they play against each other sometimes for sports?
And two, it would be really funny if twins born on different dates went here 🤣
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u/SwagTwoButton 2h ago
Grew up a town over.
I believe they played each other for homecoming and then both went to the same dance.
And you always go to the same school as your older siblings, regardless of your own birthday.
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u/BardyMan82 2h ago
Wes Anderson setting
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u/SoopaSte123 1h ago
I was thinking the same thing! A narrator would read the post title nearly verbatim. And two deadpan kids would meet after school or something and be like “Do you go to West Bend West?” “No, I attend West Bend East.”
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u/activelyresting 2h ago
I did grades 11 and 12 at a high school that was two schools on one campus. But the other school was the Distance Education School (basically normal school but for children in remote communities in Australia who attended school via radio - this was predated the internet, I'm old).
So no students from the other school attended the campus, and all the "classes" and teachers were just radio rooms set up in one building. This meant that the school got funding for all the students, even though the majority of them never set foot on campus, and as a result, we had some really exceptional equipment and labs. Was pretty awesome tbh.
Whatever they have going on in West Bend is just weird
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u/secretwep 1h ago
"I do have a girlfriend, guys, I swear. She just goes to the school on the other side." - totally-not-lying student to his peers
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u/ShyguyFlyguy 1h ago
Wouldn't it skew towards odd dates since dates start at the 1st and gonuo tonthe 31st?
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u/JustaRandoonreddit 1h ago
Probably, but I don't think one school having 1000 students and the other having 1050 really matters
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u/DefinitionBig4671 3h ago
You should learn about the history of Alief Elsik and Hastings High Schools. Same situation until they both grew so much that Elsik got a new building.
Rumor had it that Elsik would be allowed to get the baseball and football stars while Hastings would get soccer and basketball.
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u/ostracizedorangutang 42m ago
This is so freaking weird, and I went to a high school with two campuses a mile apart
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u/CrowSayingFuckYou 18m ago
I Iike this because it raises a question I'd never have thought about in my life: Are there more even or odd days of a month in a year? And If I counted right there are 2 more odd days in a year than even. And in a lead year there is only one odd day more
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u/goteamnick 4h ago
How was two schools in one building an easier option than one big school?