Newfound leaders prepare to integrate 5th grade into middle school

BRISTOL — The Newfound Area School Board is preparing for a change in administration next year, appointing a superintendent search committee, hiring former business administrator Michael Limanni to replace Angela Carpenter, and hearing a plan for the transition of fifth graders to Newfound Memorial Middle School.

The student representative to the school board, Leah McFarland, will be graduating and attending Villanova University in the fall, so she introduced her replacement, Mateo Belmonte, at the May 11 meeting.

In closing Danbury Elementary School next year, those students will be attending Bristol schools and, in order to accommodate them, the middle school will return to its original grade 5-8 configuration, freeing up space at Bristol Elementary School for younger students.

Educational standards have changed since the district converted the former Newfound Memorial High School, which served grades 7-12, into a middle school, with the upper grades moving to the newly built Newfound Regional High School to create a 4-4-4 educational structure. The current middle school serves only three grades, so having fifth graders return requires new safety measures, curriculum changes and logistical considerations.

School district leaders created a committee to plan the transition, with staff members from elementary schools, district-wide staff, parents, and administrators. They presented their recommendations, including a request to stagger the fall opening, to the school board.

“We wanted to make sure the right academic and social-emotional supports are in place for those students that are moving up as fifth graders to the middle school,” said Superintendent Paul Hoiriis. “And we wanted to maintain what we offer now, but also look for the opportunities of what we can offer to these fifth graders.”

What they heard from parents were concerns about “age-appropriate spaces,” given that fifth graders would be in the same building as eighth graders. To answer those concerns, the committee is creating a “home base” — classes in a separate section of the building to prevent daily contact with older students.

“They’re also going to have a separate bathroom that’s going to be reserved for fifth graders and sixth graders, to make sure that our parents have that level of confidence and comfort that their kids are going to be in age-appropriate spaces,” Assistant Principal Jake Roy said.

They also plan to create another exterior door to allow fifth graders to leave for recess “without disturbing the academic programming that’s happening in the rest of the building,” Roy said. “So, it’s things like that that were really informing our conversation about safety. We’re going to have a new evacuation and staging structure because we have another group of children that’s going to be joining.”

Because the fifth graders are used to structured dismissal at the end of the day, plans call for homeroom teachers to accompany them to buses for the first few weeks. Once they are used to that routine, the support will be withdrawn.

Facilities Manager Armand Girouard explained the need for upgraded electrical service to accommodate the technology needs of the new classrooms, as well as reconfiguring the parking lot to accommodate additional staff. As for furnishings, much of the need for classrooms and the playground can be met by bringing equipment from Danbury.

Curriculum Administrator Ariel Maloney shared plans for a “middle school with training wheels” transitional program, combining learning systems students have used with new middle school curriculum platforms.

Another innovation is to create dedicated social studies and science blocks.

“There are pretty clear requirements for, like, how much of that day has to be literacy, and how much of that day has to be math. Then you’ve got specials, you’ve got recess, you’ve got lunch,” Maloney said. “And so, unfortunately, sometimes science and social studies and subject areas, they’re integrated into other subjects, but sometimes they’re like, maybe not given as much time as teachers would like, just because of the constraints of scheduling.

“In transitioning to the new middle school model,” she said, “students will actually have dedicated science and social studies blocks.

"So in the morning, [the] first block after their homeroom will be their allied arts and ... then they will do either a math or an ELA block.

"And then we’ve built in this Block Four, which is going to be an intervention time, and recess, and then lunch, and then Block Five and Six will be science and social studies. So we’re going to have two sets of pods. Each pod will have both the humanities and a STEM teacher. So the humanities teacher will be teaching literacy and social studies, and the STEM teacher will be teaching math and science. Students are going to rotate between those two teachers throughout the day.”

As for school culture, the main goal was to make sure incoming fifth graders feel welcome, and they have co-curricular opportunities. They will have access to clubs, Student Council, drama, robotics, and the Technology Student Association.

“One of the biggest things for fifth graders also is access to that ski program,” said Kristin Wyman, fourth grade teacher at Bristol Elementary.

To ease them into the middle school, the district will have current fourth graders meet in Kelley Park, on Thursday, June 11, to play games and tour the school.

“They know that’s coming, and they are very excited to do this,” she said.

The school board voted to adopt a staggered school opening for this year only, with fifth and sixth graders starting school on Monday, Aug. 31, and seventh and eighth graders starting on Tuesday, Sept. 1.

“We ordinarily wouldn’t ask for this,” Principal Chris Ulrich said. “We have sixth graders incorporated into our middle school every year without having to do a staggered opening, but next year is different, and we want to be respectful of the fact that it’s different. And we want those fifth and sixth graders, if we can have a great first day with them, that’s going to set the pattern for this new chapter in our middle school history, and we want to make sure that we do it well.

"There has been a laser focus on, ‘Let’s do what’s right for these kids’ from every person on this committee, which is why we’ve been able to do an extraordinary amount of work in very little time. So this is our one ask for you guys to consider, as a staggered opening.”