FAYETTEVILLE — The intermingling of ninth-graders with older students at Fayetteville High School was an overarching concern as a 24-member committee met Monday to begin discussion of that transition in three years.
“I’m concerned about how much interaction these young people will have with the upperclassmen,” said Lisa Freeman, the only parent to attend the meeting. The committee is primarily teachers and administrators.
“All of it,” Freeman said of her concern, not just at lunch but during any unstructured time students may have before school, between classes or after school.
Her son is a sixth-grade student at McNair Middle School who will be among the first ninth-graders to transition to the high school in 2015.
“Each of you comes from a different perspective,” said Kay Jacoby, executive director of curriculum and instruction who with High School Principal Steve Jacoby organized the committee at the request of Superintendent Vicki Thomas. The two led a similar discussion in Bentonville about 10 years ago when the ninth grade was transitioned into Bentonville High School.
The group is expected to develop recommendations in the coming weeks to address issues such as a separate lunch period, the number of counselors, staffing issues, athletic programs, the accessibility of upper level classes for ninth-graders, parking and professional development for teachers.
Freeman was assured by architect Gail Shepherd from Hight-Jackson Associates the ninth-graders will be placed in a separate area of the school in the building on the northwest corner of the campus that is under construction. That building will also house the alternative learning program and the agriculture education program but ninth-graders will be in a separate area of the building.
The Fayetteville School Board voted several years ago to move the ninth grade to the high school as part of the $93 million transformation of the school which is scheduled for full completion in August 2015. The board decided the ninth grade will be moved to the high school when the construction is completed.
The first class of ninth-graders are now in the sixth grade at the district’s three middle schools.
As those students move up to the high school, the junior highs and middle schools will be realigned. Seventh and eighth grades will be housed at the junior highs and fifth and sixth grades will be at middle schools.
The realignment will also free space at the elementary schools, some of which now operate over the capacity for which they were designed.