Talk:L. D. Bell High School

I thought I'd rated this before? Deja vu Victuallers 20:19, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought so, too. I checked though, you did Trinity High School (Euless, Texas). They're pretty similar at points. :) Thanks! --Hebisddave 20:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but who ever put that foul language regarding the band winning the 2007 BOA Grandnationals needs to remove it.

Thank you

I removed the following paragraphs (added today by 138.237.240.224) from the bottom of the band section:

In 2006 the band was involved in a controversy in which the football team was angered that the L.D. Bell band would leave the stands earlier than the opponent's band and return to the stands to play much later than the opponent's band. Questions arose as to whether or not the band was being selfish and whether or not they were there to help support the football team. The band's response was controversal as well, "When the football team can actually make the playoffs, than maybe we will re-consider". This statement ignited the football team and they went 4-2 the rest of the season and made the playoffs. On October 13, 2006, the band was involved in a fight with former football player and current business tycoon Willie Leiss. Some band members, knowing how passionate Leiss was about the L.D. Bell football team, began to purposely tease, taunt, and provoke Leiss about how bad the football team was, as they just coughed up a 17-0 lead against district rival Irving MacArthur. Willie Leiss reached the end of his rope and had had it, and began to stick up for himself. It was unmatched, as Leiss was involved in a shouting war against 100+ band members and their parents. Leiss decided to retreat, but the band members persisted their provoking, causing Leiss to go back for round 2. Leiss was eventually thrown out of Pennington Field and banished from attending anymore games that year. The band members were not punished, citing their unity and heroic defense of their band pride, even though they started the fight to begin with. The football team knew what was happening, used it as motivation and rallied to win the game, went 4-2 for the rest of the year and made the playoffs. No apology has been offered from either side.

The text seemed very POV, had no citation, and seemed to be a longer write-up of two relatively minor events than is truly warranted. (Note that the two events currently listed in the Trivia section are probably of comparable or greater significance and are summarized in a sentence or two.) If a shorter, cited, NPOV version of either or both of the stories from today's edit were to be added in the future, I'd suggest creating a new section titled "controversies" or something similar -- the new section could also then include the two existing stories in the Trivia section. --Hebisddave 20:29, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This seams to be a recurring source of vandalism, similar to the William Liess stories (note William has an undocumented and poorly written wikipedia page that seems to be highly unlikely). The point of wikipedia should be to tell the world why L.D. Bell is notable and/or significant.  The band's competitive success seems to contribute to this, but the altercation from the removed paragraphs does not.  The trivia section currently includes facts that were newsworthy or paint a picture of the school's character and uniqueness. Fickman 05:02, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Recommend removal of William Liess as famous alumni
According to this article, http://ae.dfw.com/entertainment/ui/dfw/restaurant.html?id=72488&reviewId=18736 the main business that William Liess claims to own on his own wikipedia page is not owned by Willie. I nominated his user page for speedy delivery, and would recommend that his bio seems totally fabricated. Numerous searches on Google can find no article or evidence to support that any of his claims are true. All of this combined with the fact that he admits to being a valet at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine to appear as a "normal college kid" suggest that we can delete his name until proof of his notoriety is presented. Fickman 05:18, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The notable alumni listing is already removed, but I'll second that it was appropriate to remove. --Hebisddave 21:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Carnivore Award?
I got curious and did some Googling and I couldn't seem to find any reference to the "Carnivore Award" for local football. Seems odd, given that most local football seems to get good coverage on the web. Given that all of the other edits made at the same time have been reverted, it could just be fake... --Hebisddave 21:39, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. There are some facts that seem believable to those familiar with the school, and although unreferenced, should remain with the {fact} tag until proven.  Others should be removed and only admitted once they are proven, and I believe this falls into the latter category.  I've never heard of the carnivore award.  Fickman 19:44, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I went on and removed the carnivore award since I was unable to find a reference, it seems made up, and there were no counters within this discussion topic. In the event that it wasn't totally fabricated, it sounds like something a local newspaper writer might have "given" as a creative way to mention the team's strength of schedule.  The rest of the awards section has UIL based accomplishments or official awards from nationally recognized organizations that were newsworthy.  From an encyclopedic sense, the non-district strength of schedule for the varsity football team in 2006 probably isn't worthy of preservation. Fickman 19:57, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Mezmorizing Lady Steppers
I googled this, and it appears that the Texas Step Shows is a real thing (www.texasstepshows.com), but their web site is down, so I could not verify this fact. I added fact tags for the time being. The table is really meant to show awards for the school (or for students representing the school), so if this was not a UIL or other school sponsored event, it probably doesn't belong in the table. Fickman 21:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This would be a nice one to have a citation for...I asked around and was told that it's true, but I'll look for something better than &lt;ref&gt;this person I talked to last week&lt;/ref&gt;, too. I'd lean towards keeping it, but it does start to bring up the larger question of what goes in a school's article... --Hebisddave 15:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Stats from TEA AEIS report 05-06
I added faculty numbers, staff numbers, TAKS scores, ethnicity stats, etc from the TEA report at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/ -> Data Resources and Research -> Academic Excellence Indicator System (AEIS) Reports -> AEIS Reports for 2005-06 -> Schools -> Bell H S. I mostly copied the formatting from the Trinity HS article, so it may need tweaking to work best with this article's structure. --Hebisddave 15:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Famous Alumni Organization
Currently, we have kept all of the famous alumni additions in alphabetical order. Would it make more sense to do these in order of graduation year? I can see the case for both sides. Alphabetically will easily handle somebody who attended the school, didn't graduate, but has done something noteworthy. Most likely, the main traffic to this site will be alumni of Bell and/or the surrounding schools, so they might be more interested in, "who is famous that I went to school with", which would make the chronological order more useful. It's probably an academic point right now with only a handful of famous alumni, but I think it's worth questioning so that it's set up right. Fickman 19:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll put in a weak vote for chronological, although either would be acceptable to me. I agree on seeing the case for both sides. For sorting by year, I like the "who I went to school with" point; it also could draw attention to which famous alumni went to school with each other.  Knowing the name of an alum but not the year could be tricky, but editors could put (unknown) for the year and place them approximately in order or at the bottom of the list. I think I remember seeing some discussion of this on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools with similar discussion points, and I think the consensus was that alphabetical and chronological were both acceptable (but of course I can't find it now). --Hebisddave 15:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Done Fickman 21:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Citation needed - 3 of Hearts
Does there need to be an external reference in addition to the Wikipedia article that lists all three girls as band members? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fickman (talk • contribs) 21:14, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I think so. If there's a citation at the 3 of Hearts article that talks about them going to Bell, we can use that citation. The line at the 3 of Hearts article that says they went to Bell is something I added after seeing them listed here...so if we tried to just cite that Wikipedia article, it would be circular with no actual reference information. :) I'll add a Fact tag to the 3 of Hearts article, which I should have done before anyway. --Hebisddave 15:04, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Lead and campus and trivia sections
Sorry to lump so many changes into one edit, I got on a roll. :) It seemed to make sense to pull the information about the campus out of some of the other sections...there's still some in the Athletics section, because I wasn't sure whether to pull everything out of Athletics or not.  Thanks, Whisper, for pushing me to get rid of the Trivia section, I knew someone would point it out sooner or later. ;)  I changed the lead paragraphs back but added a few citations -- my personal opinion is that the band and gymnastics achievements are the biggest steps towards real notability to justify the article (instead of just because it's a high school), but I'm still fuzzy on what's best for leads and invite editing and suggestion. --Hebisddave 20:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The school has a lot of history in the success of various organizations. There's also a bit of history that would be worth noting. It seems like all the people have limited down the page to talking about the football team and band. Ok, well how about talking about when the football team made it on ESPN as setting the record for the high school team with the most points scored against it in a single game (97? 98? 99?)? I understand that those two organizations are essentially the only thing that gets any attention at the school but it is disappointing to see that the alumni -- many of whom were part of neither organization -- continue to marginalize the rest of the school. ReverseApacheMaster (talk) 03:31, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Second Paragraph of the Lead
I'm not sure why you are removing the second paragraph from the lead. My thoughts are that the lead section should explain why the school is notable. The school is indeed notable because of its nationally recognized band program and constant gymnastic success, both of which are cited. However, I'm open to hearing and considering your thoughts on why this should not be in the lead. --Hebisddave 19:44, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Need graduation year for James L. Haley
I've added James L. Haley as a notable alumni, since he's notable enough to have his own Wikipedia page, and he was recently inducted into the HEBISD Hall of Fame (source: (pdf, 5.5 MB)). I haven't yet been able to find his graduation year. His Wikipedia page says that he left graduate school to become an author, and the Hall of Fame induction document says his first book was published in 1976, which would seem to place his high school graduation date in the late 1960s. --Hebisddave (talk) 22:28, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Ryan Pegram as notable alumni?
I did not believe that this entry was significant enough to list as a notable alumni. The magazine is certainly not a widespread publication and appearing on the magazine is not in-and-of-itself notable. If the alumni did something notable to earn being featured in the magazine, then that should be brought up for discussion on its own merits. Here is the deleted text: "New Era Cover boy Ryan Pegram appeared on the cover of the September 2009 "New Era" magazine, a teen-focus magazine sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He currently attends Southern Virginia University and plans to serve a full time mission." 173.74.18.60 (talk) 01:15, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree. Unless he was put on the cover of the Mormon magazine for a significant reason, he should not be considered notable. smileguy91talk 17:22, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Requested Removal
Under the history section there is a line dedicated to the student who put bleach in the Mountain Dew of another student after not receiving the lead role in a theater production.

This does not need to be in the Wikipedia page. It is not part of the school's history, nor does it give any information as to why the school is significant. It's an isolated incident that happened to occur. If we are to include this lady in the school's history, then should we not include every arrest of every student? Every drug bust? Or the time the school went under lockdown because of a robbery in the area? The theater incident is just an irrelevant story for this page.

So I think "On June 2, 2006, a senior Bell theater student, Katherine Smith, was arrested for "tampering with a consumer product" after she put bleach in a 20 oz. Mountain Dew bottle and gave it to the 15 year old actor who had won a leading role in the play, for which Smith was the understudy.[11]" needs to be removed.


 * I agree, but I'm related to the school and won't make that edit to avoid appearance of conflict of interest. Would appreciate other editors weighing in on this. --Hebisddave (talk) 15:14, 13 September 2013 (UTC)


 * However, the edit can be carried out by Hebisddave if you take this into consideration: COI. I believe that this would have justified this edit. Please revert the edit that I made if you believe it was incorrectly made. link to revision smileguy91talk 00:43, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Year of Robert Glenn graduation
We emailed Dr. Robert Glenn, and he confirmed that he graduated in May 1971 from LD Bell. I know that's kind of flimsy as a citation replacement, but I'm hoping that this isn't a controversial enough fact for that to be a problem. Let me know if removing the question mark is a problem for you! --Hebisddave (talk) 14:44, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

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Principal change?
IPs have been making unsourced claims that principal Jim Bannister has been replaced. The school's administration web page still lists Bannister as principal  and the school district's website's staff directory is not functioning. Can anyone provide a source to verify this proposed change? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meters (talk • contribs) 01:25, January 22, 2016‎

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