If grades are a source of stress for students, grade centers can sometimes be a source of stress for school board members. Decisions about what grades to house in which building can be one of the most fraught aspects of school facility planning, no matter what is driving the change.
“There’s a whole lot more variables involved with facilities, funding, enrollment and programs, and so it really is looking into all of those as a whole,” in making decisions about grade centers, Montgomery County Superintendent Matt Thompson said.
Danville Independent added 37,000 square feet to Toliver Elementary, which will be known next year
as Edna L. Toliver Intermediate School. From left, Jonah Singleton, Marlie Cruz, Konoka Sugimoto and
Lane Stallard use laptops in the school’s new Media Center, which was included in the renovation.
Don Martin, a former superintendent who works for KSBA as a consultant and has experience in facilities planning, says when it comes to grade configurations, nothing is set in stone “because every district is different.”
He said school boards try to consider the interplay between the oldest class and the youngest class in a building. “Is that oldest class going to be a benefit to those younger kids or not?” That, he says, varies from school to school and district to district.
“Anytime you have a pretty wide age gap between the groups, it just means the school staff has to take that into consideration,” Thompson said. “I don’t think an age gap is something that would prohibit certain groups from being together. It just means we have to plan for it.”
Thompson’s district is in the process of converting its intermediate school into a fourth elementary – a move where that point came into play. It wasn’t an easy decision because, for one thing, Thompson said the intermediate school was arguably the district’s most successful.
But Montgomery County’s Local Planning Committee determined the district’s preschool program needed to be moved out of its current facility, which started the dominoes falling toward district-wide changes.
“We went through every possible scenario, which included building new, renovating, leasing possible space, moving (preschool students) back into the elementaries,” Thompson said. Those weren’t good options, but the district had an empty wing in its middle school – which housed seventh- and eighth-graders – so the board decided to move sixth-grade students there and move preschoolers into the elementary schools. The district will now have four P-5 schools.
The upshot of the new plan is that the district will be using its buildings more efficiently, Thompson said, especially since it is expected to grow by nearly 2,000 school-aged children between now and 2040 – yet another factor in the decision-making.
Middle grades especially tricky
How to handle middle school education is often the toughest decision a district has with its grade configuration.
While most districts in Kentucky utilize the traditional middle school (grades 6–8) configuration, many others have some form of an intermediate or junior high school. In fact, there are 12 different grade configurations involving sixth-grade students.
“Middle-grade education is always the slow-moving target in any school district because it’s such a challenging developmental stage for kids,” Danville Superintendent Keith Look said. Social and emotional development are critical in middle-grade education, he said.
“When we actually look at content, there’s a lot of middle-grade content that you get again in high school, so we’re still in the middle school teaching students how to learn more than we are teaching them content to retain,” Look added.
Research shows middle school programs that contain grades 6–8 can meet kids’ developmental needs, Thompson said. “Ninth grade really needs to be part of the high school, whether it’s its own separate academy or whether it’s incorporated into the full high school. With the importance that’s emerging of trying to get students connected to career pathways, you really can’t afford not to have ninth grade as a part of that,” he said.
There are examples of success in middle school education in any grade span configuration, Look said, adding that “the hallmark will not be the grade span configuration, but rather the intentional attention to the needs of that age group.”
Giving students more opportunities
Academic opportunities, another consideration in grade level revisions, were the driving force in Marion County Schools, where administrators saw glaring inequities in their two middle schools. Students who attended St. Charles Middle School had very few elective opportunities – “less than two,” according to Superintendent Taylora Schlosser – while Lebanon Middle School had several elective choices.
“While we were using our staffing allocation the exact same way for each building, because of where we were with enrollment, our students were not receiving equal opportunities,” Schlosser said. “We felt that by shifting grade levels and reallocating resources, we would create multiple opportunities beginning in the sixth grade, and we did.”
St. Charles Middle was converted to Marion County Middle School for sixth- and seventh-grade students while Lebanon Middle became Marion County Knight Academy for eighth- and ninth-grade students.
The district is now the only one in the state with a school devoted exclusively to grades eight and nine. Its middle school for sixth and seventh grades is one of only two with that configuration. The changes took effect last fall.
“I wanted to start this school year out with kids having multiple opportunities, whether it was arts and humanities, whether it was STEM, health and PE, technology, Spanish,” Schlosser said.
Making transitions easier
Danville Independent has spent nearly five years planning its upcoming change. Beginning this fall, the district will go from three P-5 elementary schools to two schools – a P-1 and a 2-5.
“Moving from three elementary facilities to two meant that we had an opportunity to consider how we deal with elementary education and comparing that not only with philosophies of education, but issues with student and community development, resources available, and facility capabilities,” Look said. “Through that the Danville Schools chose to move into a single trajectory of keeping all of our kids together pre-K to 12.”
The district will become one of 70 in the state that keep all of its students together at each class level, though some of them are single-building districts.
Look said keeping all students together throughout their public education experience gives the district “great opportunities to know every kid, know how they grow, watch their maturity, and see how we continue to coach their development – social, emotional and academic.”
It will also help the district ensure that every student has the same opportunities, which Look said “absolutely is a real benefit of this.”
The drawbacks, he said, are some students can get locked into certain social or emotional positions and don’t have the opportunity to re-establish themselves in a new school with new population dynamics.
When it comes to grade span configurations, there is no cure-all, Look said.
“But you start to weigh cost and benefits for your individual district needs that ultimately benefits the greatest number of students, and hopefully they’ll allow the district to plan for what might be the consequences or negative side effects of those shifts, to be proactive,” he said.
Board view: Danville schools keep community identity despite consolidation
Danville Independent began the process of moving from three elementary schools to one intermediate school and one primary school nearly five years ago.
Danville school board member Steve Becker said the long process allowed the district “to get logistics worked out,” such as working with the city on traffic patterns near the school.
“We had a lot of time to have many, many opportunities for staff and teachers to meet, get an idea where their classrooms are going to be,” said Becker, who is on KSBA’s board of directors. “Being able to have the time, it was a real advantage.”
The district added on to Toliver Elementary School, which will now be Edna L. Toliver Intermediate School. Hogsett Elementary will now be Mary G. Hogsett Primary for preschool through first grade. Jennie Rogers Elementary will eventually house the district office and retain its name.
Becker said keeping the names of the three schools was important to community members so the “identity has not been lost just because we’re making this transition.”
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