Just this year we have a 7/8 middle school which is attached to the high school. They share a band room and the auditorium but are never there at the same time. Make sense? 5/6 has it's own school. They started remodling at the begining of the school year. Not a good move. It's getting a bad rep for something that is only temperary. This is also causing confusion with some of the teachers. You can teach there if you are P-5 certification because it has a fifth grade, those people can teach classrooms that switch BUT a person with that is certified in middle grades are not allowed to teach self contained classrooms and many people think the kids should not switch classes.
I have never heard of any district with 5th in middle school. We have 6,7,8, but some districts around here have 7,8,9. I think that 5th is too young to get started in the craziness of all that.
We have 4,5,6,7,8 in our middle school (ugh, I know!) We house the k-3 in the elementary school. When we needed to make room for increasing enrollment, our elementary school (which is as old as dirt) was not able to handle an expansion because of it's age and other factors...they built a semi-separate wing for the 4th grade classes and separate bathroom facilities. My daughter was in one of the new 4th grade classes at the time. So what did they do? Put the 4th grade together with the 7th graders for lunch?!
I believe the 4-5 grades should be apart from the 6-8 graders. The 6-8 graders are older and should be preparing for high school years, the younger ones need to be in surroundings that are different than the older ones.
What we really need is a new school built - and that isn't about to happen.
p.s. the middle school was built to house 6-8 originally- talk about overcrowding and getting everyone in for lunch at some point during the day with a small cafeteria - which did not increase in size to accomodate 200 more children -what were they thinking?
We're a semi-rural district and have three K-5 elementary schools, one 6-8 middle school and one high school,grades 9 - 12. However, next year due to increased growth we will be building for grades 4 - 6. Actually might be just grades 5 and 6 but numbers wise they're looking to house about 750 students. Our MS, which was just renovated 4 years ago is overcrowded and all of the elementary schools are almost at capacity.
My youngest son is in 6th grade this year and seems to be doing well in MS and was ready for it. The last year in 5th grade at the elementary school was good and he matured quite a bit. I don't think he would have been ready in 5th grade for MS.
