SOLITARY SCHOOLING

It’s every high school student’s dream: Trade in the 8-to-3:30 routine for a three-hour per day schedule, and go to school only four days a week. It’s every parent’s dream, too: Ditch the 30-students-per-class standard, and give your child one-on-one instruction with a master teacher.

But this system isn’t without its drawbacks. Students have almost no interaction with their peers, the tuition is the highest in the city and there are few organized extracurricular activities. Add it up and you get the Alexander School.

Although the Alexander School has been in Dallas since 1975, it’s not well-known to the general public or to those in educational circles. (Administrators we spoke to from several school districts as well as from private schools were unfamiliar with the program.)

David Bowlin, a chemist and mathematician, started the school because he liked the concept of one-on-one education. He also saw the need for a facility that provided more than just tutoring. In 1978, the facility was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Now in its eighth year, the school has an enrollment of 60 students who each pay a tuition of $5,320 per year.

Alexander employs 18 teachers, the majority of whom have master’s degrees.

When students register for classes at the beginning of each semester, they also sign up for the time period they prefer to go to class. Each class period is 45 minutes long, during which the student and teacher sit together in a classroom. For the next 45 minutes, the student studies alone. If his homework was turned in on time and if he participated well in class, he may be excused from his study period 10 minutes early for a short break in the student lounge. This is the only time during a normal day that a student interacts with his peers, although a camping trip and a few other outside activities are planned each year. Classes are not held on Fridays.

Bowlin says that the school has two primary purposes: to offer a strong basic education and to give an advanced curriculum program in college preparation. He says that the latter is for the student who has demonstrated the ability to surpass the requirements for the standard high school course.

Of the 20 seniors who graduated from Alexander last year, 15 are attending such institutions as Richland College, Eastfield College, North Texas State, Stephen F. Austin, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Tyler Junior College and the University of Texas at Arlington.

Many Alexander students pursue time-consuming outside activities. A few Olympic hopefuls (two equestrians and one skater) who practice for several hours a day attend the school. Most of the students, however, attend because they want something different from what they were offered in more traditional high schools.

Pam Harriman, a 17-year-old junior, left Richardson High School last year for Alexander. “I really didn’t like Richardson,” she says. “I wanted to go for more academics.” She hopes to study law or medicine when she graduates from Alexander and says that she doesn’t miss the interaction with other students. At Alexander, she says, a student doesn’t have to worry about “all the racket”-or the “cliques’- that one finds at a large public school.

Isaac Rousso left Heritage Christian Academy after last year to attend Alexander. He says he “wasn’t getting the proper attention” at Heritage Christian. He says that although there is little time with the other Alexander students, the group is very close-knit. In his free time, Isaac studies in preparation for the SAT test or works in his family’s department store.

Margaret Herrera, coordinator of counseling services for the DISD, says she has mixed emotions about the school. Although she says that the one-on-one teaching is beneficial, she doesn’t think the benefits outweigh the effects of an “isolated” high school existence. “I don’t know that I would want to isolate a child,” she says. “If he is having a problem, isolating him further would be like sticking his head in the sand.”