By Melissa Pamer Staff Writer | Daily Breeze
Members of The White Point Elementary Student Council put together Valentine's Day gift bags Monday afternoon. From left are students MacKenzie Winkle, Lexi Cassillo, Christina Barlow and Katie Haase. Principal Lisa O Brien is in the background. (Chuck Bennett/Staff Photographer)
4 February 2009 -- Next fall, sixth-graders at 10 local schools may be able to stay an extra year at elementary campuses under a plan unveiled this week by Los Angeles Unified School District officials.
The 10 schools, most of them in San Pedro, would offer parents the choice of keeping their children at tight-knit neighborhood campuses or sending them on to large middle schools.
It's a way to give students who are just entering adolescence a more individualized educational experience in a safe environment where they - and their parents - are comfortable, officials said.
"The idea is in a smaller setting, there's greater opportunities for nurturing," said Michael Romero, an administrator overseeing elementary schools in LAUSD's Gardena-based Local District 8.
The move will also help elementary campuses address declining enrollment, but administrators said that was not a major motivating factor.
The change must still be approved by school site councils at each campus.
On Monday, principals who had expressed interest in the concept met with district officials to begin the planning process and address unanswered questions about class scheduling, curriculum and after-school offerings. The next day, the principals pitched the concept at faculty meetings.
Parents of the nearly 600 students affected are being notified this week. Some are overjoyed.
"Many of our parents were very excited. Two of them were jumping up and down in the hallways," said Shelly Miller, president of the parent-faculty organization at White Point Elementary, one of the affected schools.
Seven participating campuses are in San Pedro: Bandini, Barton Hill, Crestwood, Leland, Park Western Place, Taper and White Point elementary schools. The others are 156th Street Elementary in Gardena, Annalee Elementary in Carson, and Van Deene Avenue Elementary in the unincorporated strip east of Harbor Gateway.
Most of the schools post significantly higher scores on the state's testing-based Academic Performance Index than the middle schools into which they feed.
The elementary schools would be the first LAUSD campuses in the South Bay to return to a K-6 configuration since the district reorganized schools in the 1980s and '90s. In recent years, schools elsewhere in the sprawling district have been reconfigured to K-6 - about 12 percent of LAUSD elementaries.
The local plan is sort of a pilot project that could eventually be expanded to other schools with adequate space for sixth-graders, Romero said. The initiative has the approval of Superintendent Ramon Cortines, who was unavailable to comment.
The change has been spearheaded in part by Board of Education member Richard Vladovic, who represents the Harbor Area, Carson, Gardena and Lomita. A longtime educator, Vladovic said he never embraced the idea of middle school.
"We're forcing kids to grow up too fast," Vladovic said. "In 40 years, I've heard it so much: Why are we rushing them? Many have said to me, `Wouldn't it be nice if we could keep them back?"'
Vladovic calls the process "deconfiguration," and frames the issue as a matter of parent choice.
"I think most parents would agree - they would like to keep their youngsters back," Vladovic said, "This gives us another shot to work with them in that small environment. And it gives parents a little bit more times to spend with their kids. Once you get into a middle school, they're overly influenced by peers."
At White Point Elementary, Miller said she would have welcomed a chance to keep her daughter at the coastal campus instead of sending her to sixth grade at Dana Middle School last fall.
"She and those girls were overwhelmed," Miller said. "It's a critical time for the kids."
That sentiment is echoed by teachers and administrators at White Point, which has three unoccupied classrooms and a fluctuating enrollment that depends in part on deployment from nearby military housing.
"The transition is precarious," said fifth-grade teacher Carolyn Johnson. "There is a lot of panic. People talk about moving home-schooling."
A few weeks ago, Johnson and other teachers heard about Vladovic's plans to push for K-6 campuses. They asked their principal, Lisa O'Brien, if White Point could participate.
"There are many of us who felt sixth-graders should never have been moved," said teacher Tim Howe, the school's union chapter chair. "We feel we can do a better job for them here at White Point."
O'Brien has wholeheartedly embraced the plans, but she said there are drawbacks. The school doesn't offer the award-winning marching band that Dana Middle has, for one thing. And it's unclear how teachers will provide elective courses to students.
O'Brien and several teachers have formed a team to manage the change.
"We want to give them an authentic sixth-grade experience," O'Brien said. "Planning is very important. I do not want it to be a repeat of fifth grade."
Students have a mix of reactions. Some were excited about middle school, while others are thrilled to stay where they're known.
MacKenzie Winkle, a fifth-grader in student government, said she was happy to have a chance to stay. But not all her classmates agree.
"It's mixed emotions. They wanted lockers. They were looking forward to culmination," MacKenzie said, referring to the fifth-grade graduation ceremony. "But my mom was happy because she thought we're, well, too young to go into middle school and experience all that drama."
What drama? Bullying, "boyfriend-girlfriend stuff" and girls being mean to each other, MacKenzie and other White Point students said.
Those, too, are the concerns of educators who have for decades debated the proper place for students who are experiencing physical and emotional changes at the cusp of adolescence.
In the early years of the 20th century, public education was typically divided into K-8 and four-year high school campuses. Junior high schools - grades seven and eight - began appearing in the first half of the century.
By the early 1970s, the sixth-to-eighth-grade "middle school" concept was spreading, supported by the notion of developmental appropriateness. Now middle school is by far the most prevalent configuration, education researchers say.
In Los Angeles Unified, a behind-the-curve realignment that moved sixth graders to middle schools and ninth graders to high schools was completed in the mid-1990s. Parent protests at San Pedro schools helped make the community's campuses some of the last to convert.
In recent years, particularly in urban school districts, a trend has emerged to create K-8 campuses, according to Al Summers, director of professional development at the Ohio-based National Middle School Association.
Summers said he hasn't seen a particular trend toward K-6. More important than configuration, he said, is making sure educators understand the children's developmental stage.
"If I'm going to put them back in K-6 and treat them like a large version of elementary kids, it's not going to be a good situation," Summers said.
In promoting the new plan at local LAUSD campuses, officials have cited a 2005 internal district study that found sixth-graders who attended K-6 schools posted higher test scores gains than their peers at middle school campuses. Scores declined after a transition to seventh grade, but overall achievement gains persisted through middle school, the study found.
A 2007 paper published by Duke University found sixth-graders placed in middle schools were more than twice as likely to have discipline problems than those at K-6 schools. Sixth-graders in elementary schools had higher test scores that persisted as they moved up to ninth grade, the study found.
But Summers said the Duke study had been "exceedingly controversial," adding that there's no definitive research showing one configuration is better than another.
Romero and Vladovic said they felt the research was on their side.
In the next few months, they'll be preparing for the switch.
If parents at all 10 schools elect to keep their current fifth-graders on elementary campuses, some 30 sixth-grade teachers would probably be moved from middle schools because of lost enrollment there, Romero said.
For now, there are no concrete plans to expand the initiative. Parents whose children are at schools not making the change will have to send their children on to middle school as planned.
"Simply because it's new, we wanted to do it well and in a limited fashion," Romero said. "We want to try this out, learn from it and, if we do expand in 2011-12, we have a knowledge base."
What's next? -- Ten local LAUSD elementary schools may offer sixth grade next year: 156th Street, Annalee, Bandini, Barton Hill, Crestwood, Leland, Park Western Place, Taper, Van Deene Avenue and White Point.
- First, school site councils must vote on the reconfiguration before Feb. 12.
- Then parent meetings will be held by Feb. 19.
- Parents must return commitment forms by March 12.
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