By Sherry Posnick Goodwin
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At Arroyo High, which includes 8th grade, math teacher John Kelly helps Von Ryan Pineda work a problem. |
When it comes to school configuration, San Lorenzo Unified School District staff members have experienced just about everything.
Budget cuts forced San Lorenzo to close its junior high schools for seventh- and eighth-graders. After switching to K-7 elementary schools and 8-12 high school campuses, the district changed its mind again. Now it has middle schools for grades 6-8.
That gives longtime members of the San Lorenzo Education Association some perspective on the various configurations.
The K-7 configuration gets mixed reviews.
"Some children did very well working with one particular instructor or a team of instructors," recalls Charlotte Davis, who has taught in the district since 1962. "But I know that the seventh-graders generated more discipline reports and more suspensions than any other group of kids in the elementary school. And sixth-graders were also trying to find out what their limits were. Many people were glad to see the seventh grade move out of elementary school, along with the whole series of problems that had to be dealt with. But some could never see the rationale of putting them all together. Now, instead of a few classes of teens with raging hormones, you have lots of them - all at one site."
"Having seventh-graders on campus with kindergartners was very challenging," says E'Monii Bailes, a teacher at Edendale Middle School. She doesn't believe the K-7 configuration was particularly successful for the older students in self-contained classrooms. "Their needs as adolescents were not being met. There were no counselors for these students."
Having older children "remain babies" by keeping them at elementary school was not necessarily a good thing. "It depends on the community and what is going on when they go home," she says. "It might deter some students from certain activity, but it limits kids in development and slows them down, so they are acting younger instead of the age they are. As a teacher and a parent, I've learned that kids have to grow up. Why prolong it? They are going to be faced with other issues if they are acting younger than they are."
Now that students are in middle school, there are still not enough counselors and administrators to provide support and discipline for this group, says Bailes. "But it's better now. Things still need to be worked on, but it's better."
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Changing school configuration does not solve all problems, says E'Monii Bailes at Edendale Middle School in San Lorenzo. |
Having older students at the elementary school did not deter gang activity, recalls Tracy Vernon, who now works as a drama teacher at Washington Manor Middle School, in a neighborhood where gangs are not a problem. "The elementary school was smack in the middle of gang territory. It was really bad."
She believes that neighborhoods and income levels are much more of an influence than school configuration.
The advantage of middle school, says Vernon, is that adolescents are exposed to electives such as drama, band, art, dance and music, along with a better physical education class. "It's just amazing compared to what they had in K-7," says Vernon. "The richness of the elective program is wonderful."
There's still a possibility that middle school electives will be reduced or eliminated entirely in the future. "The irony of this whole thing is that if we had stayed a K-7 model, with minimal PE, minimal music and no electives, we would probably be NCLB compliant right now," says Vernon.
"NCLB may take away electives, but honestly, in our society, we place too much emphasis on extracurricular things," says Bailes. "Electives are wonderful, but when kids are not performing at grade level, academics are more important." Her school is piloting a program to have extra reading classes for students who need to catch up.
And what about having eighth-graders in high school?
"It was pretty strange," recalls SLEA President John Kelly, a math teacher at Arroyo High School. "Some of the boys were so small they really stood out. There was a really big gap. It wasn't so good for eighth-graders who were precocious. It definitely wasn't good for some of the eighth-grade girls who developed early and were around older boys they wouldn't have been exposed to in middle school or elementary school."
Academically, he says, there was little advantage for eighth-graders, since few took advanced math classes at the high school level. For a while, eighth-graders were assigned to small learning communities or "houses" with a core group of teachers. "It worked for a while, but people got tired of it. It became harder to schedule and it fizzled out." Eventually, he says, the community became unhappy with the 8-12 configuration and pushed for middle schools.
While SLEA members may have differing opinions, most agree that school configuration changes require planning, administrative support and adequate funding. And most agree that's not what happened in San Lorenzo.
"When we took our elementary school setting and changed into a middle school, there were no science labs or real gyms for PE activities," says SLEA Vice President Cathy Lee, a math/science teacher at Edendale Middle School. "When they made us into a middle school and gave us a grade from the high school, we opened with just one principal, one vice principal and one counselor. That's not enough. I would say that we needed at least one more vice principal and one more counselor."
"There is no magic answer or panacea in grade configuration," says Davis. "Every situation has its pluses and minuses. You have to look and analyze them. Unfortunately, we don't do much of that today because we're addressing standards, uniform curriculum and testing."
"Any time there are changes within a school site, it needs to be well thought out," adds Bailes. "I don't think there's one magic answer. Changing configuration will not solve all of the problems. You still have to deal with teacher turnover, transiency, family income levels and ethnic background, and parent participation. The list goes on and on. In my view, changing configuration is not the end-all or be-all."
