Year-round classes mulled for middle school
POTTSTOWN >> Still struggling with behavior problems at the middle school, the district is asking the community whether it would support the idea of yearround school there.
School board member Raymond Rose recently made a presentation to the board’s Community Relations Committee about the idea of having the middle school educate students for 45 days, followed by 15 days off.
The schedule would be staggered so that all 975 students would only be in the middle school building at the same time for 15 out of 60 days, said Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez.
Since Pottstown closed Edgewood Elementary School in 2014 and moved all fifth-graders into the middle school on North Franklin Street, there have been ongoing behavior problems, he said.
“We have four different levels of pre-pubescence and pubescence in the same building, so if you want to separate them without opening a new building, the answer is you have to look at creative scheduling,” said Rodriguez.
But before the district takes too deep a dive into what the idea would look like in Pottstown, it wants to hear back from the community.
“The board is not OK with not exploring every option, but before we go too far, we want to hear back from stakeholders,” he said.
Emails were sent to staff, parents and the general public, asking them all to fill out a simple five-question survey about whether the idea would work in Pottstown.
The online survey follows a short video in which Rodriguez says the district wants to know what kind of impacts such a change would have on family life.
He said the upsides of the changed schedule involve fewer students in the middle school building, less of the “summer learning loss” that typically occurs during July and August and the potential to be less expensive than opening Edgewood.
Downsides include a negative impact on sports and other activities, impact on family summer vacation plans and “siblings with different schedules.”
Rodriguez said anything that might prevent “summer learning loss” would most benefit the fifth grade, where Pottstown’s scores — and those of other districts around the state — tend to slump the most.
“Fifth grade is where we struggle the most and go lowest on scores, and then they start to climb in higher grades and mostly recover by high school,” Rodriguez said.
However, according to the research Rose did, he found “the data is inconclusive.”
“In doing research for possible solutions for the middle school, I came up with the year-round schooling and the multitrack solutions that some school districts have employed,” Rose wrote in an email to Digital First Media.
Although according to his presentation, “there are some findings that for lowincome schools, year-round schooling can lead to improved test scores, especially in math.”
“As a school board director, I felt I needed to do my due diligence and present it to the board although it is a radical idea,” Rose added.
As of July, only about 3,700 school districts in the country have adopted some variation of the year-round schedule, about 4 percent of school districts nationwide, and most of them are in the western states.
Schools in Texas, California and North Carolina have used this kind of “multitrack scheduling” to reduce issues of over-crowding and maximize use of facilities, according to Rose’s research.
Rodriguez said many variables will affect whether the district moves ahead with this iade, or returns to the debate about whether to reopen Edgewood.
“We could find this is twice as expensive as reopening Edgewood, or it could be half as much,” he said.
The district has openly considered the idea of reopening Edgewood, but decided in September that it would not attempt to do so in the 2019-2020 school year.
The decision to close Edgewood, the district’s newest building, and renovate the remaining four elementary schools was made in 2012 after many years of proposals, counter proposals and indecision.
Currently, the building is rented out to two tenants — Head Start and Cottage 7, a private special education school to which public schools send students in need of emotional support services.
As for feedback, some was already showing up Wednesday on the district’s Facebook page, where the link to the video and survey are posted.
“I saw the video and I do not agree with the change specially in summer time,” posted Yanira M Morales.
“I think its good the kids have more time off in the whole year. Instead of sitting home in front the TV playing video games in the summer,” posted Teresa Medvetz.” They still have 30 days off in the summer then more time in the winter.”
“It could be a good idea but they need to address the safety issues for students and staff before they address loss of information over summer break,” posted Krystal DiPietro who has complained to the school board in March about bullying and conflicts at the middle school.