Is the goal of grades 5 through 8 to make grade 5 students move out and save space for preschool students? Universal preschool is yet to be created, passed or mandated, a program with no timeline. Preschool students (when and if the program is passed) do not need the cafeterias, gyms and large meeting spaces saved for them. They need ground floor classrooms, lower toilet seats, colorful learning areas and outside play space. Not much more. So why would one save unsuitable space for a program that’s still a dream?
What the elementary fifth-grade classrooms offer is security, safety, identity and comfort to the 10-year-old learners. The relationships with each other, with the present teacher, with their former teachers, provide them with the best learning environment possible before they move on.
Don’t be fooled by the State Department of Education charts that lump grades 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 and 7-8. The Concord schools do it differently. Grades K and 1 are the two years when students are introduced to school, its practices and its opening curriculum. Grades 2 and 3 are tied together in mastering the skill of reading and extension of all the other disciplines. If a student learns to read by the end of grade 3, then she/he will read to learn from then on. And finally, grades 4 and 5 are tied in that they work on all phases of literacy — reading, researching, writing and making presentations. Most students need that full two-year focus to prepare for the middle grades which, in turn, prepare students for high school tasks.
And then comes the issue of cost. The extra costs for a 5-8 configuration include these: a building with one-third more space, furniture for one-third more students, higher pay for all principals and vice-principals, the most likely addition of another vice-principal, assorted staff people which would come with any program additions for grade 5 students, the possibility of two cafeterias because parents don’t like their children eating lunch at 10 a.m. or 1:30 p.m. and upward changes in transportation to that single school.
And finally, think about the commonly used phrase, “kids seem to be growing up faster these days.” That may be. But just because of their exposure to social media, TikTok, their own cell phones, their loss of the neighborhood activities of days gone by it doesn’t mean that their capacity to learn and abstract has kept pace.
It doesn’t mean that they now have outstanding ability to recall, understand, analyze, apply, evaluate and create both information and ideas. Their social selves may be outstripping their learning selves. Wouldn’t it be good to slow down the differences in these two separate sides of their being? Let grade 5 students be kids one year longer.
Stop tampering with 20-plus years of success at Rundlett Middle School. 75% of the middle schools in the United State are of the grades 6,7 and 8 variety.
(Betty Hoadley has 14 years of experience teaching grades 5 or 6, five years in a junior high with grades 7-9 and seven years of high school teaching. She holds an at-large position on the Concord School District Charter Commission.)