| January 7th, 2010 Gatsas suggests middle school alternative MANCHESTER – A proposal to bump Manchester ninth-graders out of the high schools and into the middle schools is now off the table, Mayor Ted Gatsas said yesterday. "Not in consideration," Gatsas said. Instead, the mayor is now toying with the idea of eliminating the middle school concept entirely, saying he expects a newly formed task force to explore the possibility of creating "neighborhood schools" for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. At the same time, he is plowing ahead with a roughly sketched proposal to funnel Hooksett students into West High School. The subject will be up for discussion tomorrow night in a first-of-its-kind meeting between school board members from Manchester and three neighboring towns: Hooksett, Auburn and Candia. "The West High School issue is a serious issue, and I think it's imperative that we start the conversation sooner than later," Gatsas said. That conversation will coincide with a broader examination of the Manchester school system. On Tuesday, in his inauguration speech, Gatsas announced the formation of a task force that would, among other things, explore the pros and cons of redistricting at the lower grade levels. Many officials in both Manchester and Hooksett have said they're eager to see how all of these discussions play out, though some question just how feasible the mayor's ideas may be. Two Manchester school board members, Chris Herbert and Debra Gagnon Langton, said they don't see how the district could do away with its middle schools, as Gatsas is now suggesting. "I don't think this city can go back to K to 8. I don't think we have the infrastructure for it," said Gagnon Langton, an at-large committeeman. Gatsas' earlier idea, floated just after his election in November, was to bump ninth-graders down to middle school and bump sixth-graders down to elementary school. At the time, he said he hoped the realignment would relieve what he saw as overcrowding at Central and Memorial high schools, though some officials disputed the suggestion that either school was, in fact, overcrowded. Yesterday, in an interview, Gatsas backed away from the idea of moving the ninth-graders, calling it a "very extreme idea." Gatsas said he is taking cues from other cities that have dumped the middle school model in favor of what he called "neighborhood schools." "That is the wave that is working its way across the country right now," he said. The move would revive a school model that has not existed in Manchester in several decades, one in which sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders share a school with kindergartners. It would, at the same time, divvy up the older students into smaller blocs, which would be scattered across the district, rather than lumped together in large middle schools. The idea did not sit well with Gagnon Langton, who teaches sixth grade in Litchfield and says the middle-school concept is working well in Manchester. Gatsas said the "neighborhood school" idea needs studying, conceding it's possible the newly appointed Task Force on Student Alignment might come up with a different recommendation. "But I would hope that's one of the things they'd be looking at," he said. The mayor is hoping to move quickly on plans for West High School, a school whose fate has been frequently debated in recent years but never settled. Two years ago, as Bedford was withdrawing its students from the school, a city panel recommended turning West into a specialized "magnet" school. The idea was never funded. Gatsas said the school's future will be at the center of tomorrow night's meeting with school officials from Hooksett, Auburn and Candia. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Manchester Health Department conference room. The mayor is asking attendees to form a subcommittee that would, according to the agenda, "identify concerns in, and visions for, Manchester high schools." Officials in surrounding towns hope to talk about more than just West. Becky Berk, chairman of the SAU 15 school board, which covers Hooksett, Auburn and Candia, said she would like to "work on the relationship in general" between Manchester and the surrounding towns. Berk is a member of the Hooksett school board, which has recently voiced some concerns about budget cuts in Manchester schools and their impact on the town's students. - Printed in The Union Leader, January 7, 2010 Back To News |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Paid for by Ted Gatsas for Mayor. B. Rivard, Fiscal Agent PO Box 6655, Manchester, NH 03108 603.623.0220
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
