FAYETTEVILLE — A clear consensus on the future of middle-level education in Fayetteville hasn’t surfaced after five public meetings to gather feedback from parents and others within the School District.
Fewer than 80 people attended the five public input meetings.
Some support a grade configuration recommended by a committee of administrators and teachers. That would put grades 5-6 in the middle schools and grades 7-8 in the junior high schools in 2015 when freshmen move to the high school.
Others support a configuration that would convert the three middle schools and the two junior high schools into campuses for fifth through eighth grades. That configuration could cost as much as $23 million to fully implement, according to administration estimates.
The School Board is expected to act on a configuration for middle level education at its meeting June 28.
The staff recommendation is to:
• Reconfigure all elementary schools to grades K-4 (or pre-K through 4).
• Reconfigure Holt and McNair to grades 5-6 and Owl Creek to pre-K to sixth grade.
• Reconfigure Ramay and Woodland to grades 7-8.
The School Board decided to hold off on changes to attendance boundaries or methods for populating the schools until closer to the 2015 timetable for implementation.
Transitions
At some of the meetings, parents expressed concern at the number of school-to-school transitions required in a school career and the relatively short stays students have at each of the middle-grade schools, if the school board adopts a 5-6/7-8 plan.
Students now change schools three times — after fifth, seventh and ninth grades. They would change schools the same number of times if the 5-6/7-8 plan is adopted.
Parents supporting the 5-8 scenario have noted students would only change schools twice — between fourth and fifth grades and between eighth and ninth grades.
Susan Averitt, whose children are in Butterfield Trail Elementary School, said some children need more time to adjust to new schools.
“I use the word disruption rather than transition,” Averitt said. “Just going to middle school is a disruption.”
Amy Robinson said her daughter transferred to Haas Hall Academy, a charter secondary school in Fayetteville, after feeling overwhelmed at Woodland Junior High School. Her daughter went to Washington Elementary School, then was transferred to Butterfield Trail because of rezoning. She spent two years at McNair Middle School where she did well socially but felt unchallenged academically before moving on to Woodland, Robinson said.
Superintendent Vicki Thomas told parents concerned about transitions the middle school educational model will be implemented systemwide no matter what scenario is adopted.
In that model, students share a core team of four or five teachers who get to know each child in depth. The teachers share student information at each grade level as the students progress. The junior high schools aren’t configured that way now.
Supporters of the 5-8 model said a longer stay at a single school promotes more involvement by students and parents.
District officials, however, said creating five schools for grades 5 through 8 would force the district to cut specialized programs because of costs. Those programs include foreign language, family and consumer science, technology education, robotics and modeling, said Patty Plummer, special projects coordinator for the district. Band and athletic programs would also be effected negatively, administrators have said.
However, such losses didn’t draw as much parent discussion as other aspects, such as transitions.
Cost
Depending on the scenario the board selects, the district estimates costs between $238,793 and $23.3 million to configure the middle schools and the junior high schools for the new grade setup.
For example, a full complement of programs — gyms, fields, room upgrades, additional building wings, instruments, uniforms, career classrooms, transportation, staff, stipends — would cost about $23.3 million, according to district figures announced at the meetings. That basically replicates at all five locations what is available in different combinations at the three middle schools and two junior high schools now.
Conversely, an estimated $238,793 will be needed if the middle school program continues as it is today for grades 5-6 and grades 7-8. That would cover upgrades to the science laboratories at the junior high schools and additional bus drivers for transportation. Thomas said upgrades to the science rooms are needed regardless of the structure adopted by the School Board.
Stacy Robinson, a Butterfield Trail parent, said the estimated cost of the 5-8 model is significant, but parents who believe it’s best for their children would work to get community support for the change.
“We as parents would mobilize to get the money,” she said.
Transportation, Proximity
Many parents focused on promoting a neighborhood school concept in Fayetteville.
When the subject of proximity surfaced at the McNair Middle School meeting, Thomas told parents the middle schools aren’t thought of as neighborhood schools because there are only three, as opposed to nine elementary schools.
“Typically a middle school is not considered a neighborhood school,” Thomas said.
Over the course of the meetings, parents have complained transportating students from the east side to the west — namely from the Butterfield Trail zone to Holt Middle School — was a bad idea. Only one middle school is in east Fayetteville. Two are on the west side of town.
Meeting Information
Board Meeting
The Fayetteville School Board is expected to act on the grade configuration for middle-level education later this month. At issue is a configuration of grades 5 and 6 at middle schools and grades 7 and 8 at junior high schools or establishing five campuses of grades 5-8.
When: 5 p.m. June 28
Where: Ray Adams Leadership Center, 1000 W. Stone St.
The board delayed a decision on attendance zones until closer to the ninth-grade transition in 2015.
Janine Parry, whose children attend Washington Elementary School, said she wanted to see the School District rethink how the middle schools and junior high schools will be populated, perhaps starting with a scenario in which students who live one to two miles from those schools are given priority to attend the nearby school.
Thomas told parents at a Woodland meeting the configuration of grades has less to do with student success than what happens inside the classrooms and school buildings.
“The bottom line in any scenario is the leadership in the building, a strong curriculum and the delivery of instruction,” she said.
Building Capacity
A driving force behind the district’s decision to reconfigure grades is overcrowding. Three elementary schools and one middle school have crowding issues, with capacities over 90 percent at the elementary schools and capacity above 100 percent at the middle school.
Crowding sends overflow students to a different school. State school regulations specify the maximum number of students in each class. If, for example, a school has eight more students in a third-grade class than the law allows, the district must either add another teacher for that grade or transfer the overflow students to a school where room exists.
Lisa Hearne, a Butterfield Trail parent, said she studied the enrollment data used by the district and found about 2,000 middle-level students live east of College Avenue and 2,000 live west of that major thoroughfare.
However, Hearne said, 67 percent of the building capacity is on the west side of the district and lamented the travel distance required for some students.
“Just looking at capacity, a bad decision was made” that put too much capacity on one side of town, she said.
Susan Heil, board president, expects the board will be ready to vote on the configuration issue at its June 28 meeting. Some board members attended all of the public meetings; all of them attended at least one.
“I feel like we heard a good representation of what’s out there,” Heil said. “You always want to see more people. That’s always a challenge.”