Kip Kinkel was in a sea of 1,700 students at Springfield's Thurston High School. And the number of counselors has dropped while the number of students has increased. There are a variety of ways schools can become far more personal. And they don't all cost a lot more money. The most obvious is to become smaller.
Studies show smaller high schools have higher academic achievement and lower dropout rates.
Big schools can reorganize into four or five smaller schools, a practice that has been successful in Chicago, New York City and other places. Small autonomous high schools work even better. A classic example is Central Park East in New York, where teams of teachers are matched with small groups of students. Teachers see no more than 40 students a day. They stay with the same group of students year after year.