The Columbus Dispatch

12/19/2007

By Simone Sebastian and Dean Narciso

Superintendent Gene Harris wants to eliminate middle schools in the Columbus school district and house seventh- and eighth-graders in high schools instead, she announced at yesterday’s school board meeting.

Under the plan, students would attend elementary schools from preschool through sixth grade.

Schools in the Linden neighborhood would be the first to convert to the new system. As soon as next school year, sixth grade could be added to four Linden-area elementary schools — Hamilton, Linden, South Mifflin and Windsor.

As soon as the 2009-2010 school year, students from those four schools would feed directly into Linden-McKinley High School in the seventh grade.

Now, most students in the district attend middle school from sixth through eighth grade and feed into high-school buildings in the ninth grade.

Harris said the change could cut down on students dropping out and improve parental involvement in schools. Because students would attend a school building longer under the plan, there would be more time for parents, teachers and students to form strong relationships, she said.

“The research evidence suggests that the impact of students transitioning from one school to another is largely negative,” Harris said.

Harris said the district would save money in operation and busing costs, though it’s not yet clear if middle-school buildings would be vacant or be used to expand the high-school programs. She does not need school-board approval to implement the grade-level reorganization plan. But the board will need to vote on funding the changes.

District officials will assess the costs and process for the grade reconfiguration in Linden over the next several weeks, Harris said. She expected details of the plan to be ready by the end of January.

The districtwide plan will take several months to evaluate, she said.

Several high schools are consolidating grades seven through 12 around the country. But few urban districts have converted all of their high schools as Harris plans.

One that is is Indianapolis Public Schools, which is phasing in the conversion of high schools to grades 7-12 over several years.

Most conversions are with individual schools. In the mid-1980s, Michigan Center Junior-Senior High School was formed to better utilize idle space in the high school, located 77 miles west of Detroit.

“We really didn’t have too many problems, but there were always concerns among the parents,” recalled Mark Haag, superintendent of schools for Michigan Center School District for three years. He took another job a year ago.

“Because of the large difference in age, you didn’t see some of the problems you’d think you would, socially,” he said. “Generally a seventh-grader doesn’t want to socialize with a 12th-grader.”

Schools in the Linden area would be the first to be reorganized on recommendation of a task force that has been studying the rapid decline of student enrollment in the neighborhood.

The task force presented a number of recommendations to revitalize public education in Linden, including the grade reconfiguration.

No Linden parents spoke last night, but in the past they have expressed concerns about the safety of seventh- and eighth-graders having contact with older teenagers in high school.

Consolidating middle and high schools saves money and removes transitions between schools, keeping some students from dropping out, said Khaula Murtadha, executive associate dean of education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

“The transition time is one of the most precarious,” she said. “For young people in the city, it’s better to eliminate those precarious times.”

But, she added, there is not enough measurable evidence to prove the concept’s long-term effectiveness.

ssebastian@dispatch.com

dnarciso@dispatch.com

The plan was one suggestion from a task force studying enrollment decline.

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