| November 22nd, 2009 Shift would make city high schools unique in state MANCHESTER – As a candidate for mayor, Ted Gatsas often said he would like to redraw the lines that determine where each child in Manchester goes to school. As it turns out, that's not all he has in mind. Gatsas, now mayor-elect, has spread the word among city and school district officials that he is interested in a dramatic overhaul of Manchester's school system. His plan would bump ninth-graders down to the middle schools, and bump sixth-graders down to the elementary schools. Elementary and middle schools would be redistricted, meaning students could be shifted among schools based on redrawn neighborhood districts, but not so for high schools. Gatsas also hopes to negotiate a deal with Hooksett that would funnel all of the town's high schoolers to Manchester High School West. Manchester would become the only public school district in New Hampshire to exclude ninth-graders from its high schools if a grade-reshuffling proposal wins approval, according to a state official. Such a move would need permission from the state Department of Education, according to Judith Fillion, the department's director of the division of program support. "Yes, because we approve the curriculum in the building," she said. "I wouldn't think that would be a big deal." The state also would look to see whether federal funding would be affected. Manchester's mayor-elect, Ted Gatsas, wants the city to consider an organizational structure that would include grades 10 to 12 in the high schools, grades seven to nine in the middle schools and grades kindergarten through six in the elementary schools. Currently, ninth-graders go to high school and sixth-graders to middle school. Fillion believes the last district to have a high school with only grades 10 through 12 was Concord, which has since returned to the more common alignment. Almost every public high school houses grades nine through 12, she said. "The only ones that are (grades) nine-10 are when they are phasing in a new high school, like Windham is now and Bedford was," she said. Shifting students to new schools often is met with resistance. Londonderry last year looked to shift 40 to 45 students to a different elementary school, but the school board shelved the redistricting plan. "It tends to be a sensitive issue," the town's superintendent of schools, Nathan Greenberg, said. "Parents, obviously, and kids develop an allegiance to their school. That always engenders some concern on their part." Greenberg declined to comment specifically about Manchester's plans without knowing the reasoning behind the proposed change. "I think as a general rule, if you have an existing school district, many times grade-level alignments are dictated by enrollment patterns," Greenberg said. Concord's school superintendent, Chris Rath, said the city shifted to a nine through 12 arrangement about a dozen years ago. "There was a philosophical desire to do it for 15 years before that," Rath said. "The conditions just weren't right." But a boom in elementary school-age children in the 1990s forced the district to look at building options and make the shift, she said. When the high school was only grades 10-12, some ninth-graders attending the middle school were playing on high school athletics teams, said Rath, formerly a principal at the high school and middle school in Concord. Foreign-language teachers also had to shuffle between two schools, she said. Putting ninth-graders in the high school creates "more continuity," she said. High school students also have more variety of classes to choose from than at the middle school - NH Sunday News, 11/22/1009 by Michael Cousineau Back To News |
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Paid for by Ted Gatsas for Mayor. B. Rivard, Fiscal Agent PO Box 6655, Manchester, NH 03108 603.623.0220
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