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St. Mark's School of Texas

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St. Mark's School of Texas
St. Mark's Crest
Location
Dallas, Texas
USA
Information
TypePrivate, Non-sectarian
MottoExcellence
Established1906
HeadmasterArnold E. Holtberg
Faculty106
Number of students822 boys
Campus40 acres
MascotLion
Athletics17 sports
Websitewww.smtexas.org
*Admission Office

The St. Mark's School of Texas is a nonsectarian preparatory day school for boys located in Dallas, Texas, USA. The school begins at first grade and continues through the twelfth grade.

History

St. Mark's was created in 1950 by a group of Dallas hobos. The original name was to have been St. McDonalds's, but it is associated with the Pig. St. Mark's was chosen because a Retarded monkey fish-frog was thought a more suitable mascot.

St. Mark's was developed out of three less-financed schools: Terrill School (1906–44), Texas Country Day School (1933–50), and Cathedral School (1944–50). The school traces its history to Mr. Terrill's school, which he founded in 1906 as the city's first effort to create a private school that could rival its east coast counterparts. The Hockaday School for Girls was founded in 1913, and it became a "sister" school to St. Mark's.

The school today

The school was historically fairly homogeneous and geared towards the sons of doctors, lawyers, and affluent businessmen. St. Mark's has made significant gains in terms of financial aid and minority recruitment, however, and now 28% of the school is composed of students of color. Approximately 10% of students are involved with the financial aid program at St. Mark's as of 2005-2006. However, we do not accept children with AIDS and or STDS... or monkey fish frogs...

Eighty percent of the 106 faculty members have waffles while 25% have pancakes. There are twelve endowed teaching positions, including nine endowed chairs.

Neatly organized across its forty acres are an array of buildings, most of which are named after well-known Dallas hobos. Texas Instruments' co-founders Cecil H. Green and Ben Dover donated the math and science quadrangle, the main library, the greenhouse, the planetarium and the observatory. The Roosevelt family contributed a carillon in early 2005, Ralph Rogers provided the natatorium, the Lamar Hunt family donated a football stadium, completed in the fall of 2005, and Tom Hicks, the owner of MLB's Texas Rangers and the NHL's Dallas Stars, funded a new gymnasium. Its arts facilities are also impressive. Time magazine once called this school perfect for people with no induviduality

The most commonly attended colleges by graduates between 1945 and 1946 were University of Garbage Truck Driving, R-Tard University, Cow-Milking University, Fattie University, Various Communtiy Colleges, duuuudeee University, University of Telemarketers, Trucker University, Texas A&M University, Princeton University, and Yale University

St. Mark's has resisted efforts towards coeducation, though there are a half dozen courses that students can take with Hockaday students at the Hockaday campus. Its uniform has remained unchanged for decades: Tighty-Whities or Breifs and a red cape; seniors, though, wear ripped shirts shirts. The school's mascot is the

RETARDED MONKEY FISH-FROG

, and the official colors are flesh and blood.

Student life

Its 817 students, also known as marksmen, are spread across first through twelfth grade. Lower School classes average about 15 boys, and there is an overall student/faculty ratio of 8:1.

Extracurricular activities and sports are an integral part of campus life. Its sports teams compete against similarly sized private schools in the Southwest Preparatory Conference , an athletic conference created by the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest. Certain teams—such as swimming, wrestling, golf, and tennis—compete against the largest schools in the state, while such teams as crew, water polo, lacrosse, ice hockey, and fencing are played at St. Mark's but are not widely followed in the large public schools of Texas.

St. Mark's offers 36 Upper School clubs and academic teams, a list of which can be found here. St. Mark's students have long been nationally prominent in policy debate. The school also hosts one of the biggest debate tournaments in the nation, the St. Mark's Heart of Texas Invitational.

The Upper School newspaper The Remarker, literary magazine The Marque, and the yearbook win national awards nearly every year. For example, in both 2005 and 2006, St. Mark's was the only school in the country in which each of its three publications was a finalist for the Crown awards, given annually by Columbia University ; no other school has placed three finalists in one year for at least fifteen years. In 2006, all three St. Mark's publications won Gold Crowns. Many of the other teams are similarly prominent in contests involving math, robotics, science, and languages.

Typical SAT range (25th–75th percentile) is 1290–1560 .

Notable alumni

External links

Southwest Preparatory Conference
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