School explores possible options to move middle school grades

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Prairie du Chien High School and Bluff View Middle School principal Doug Morris. (Steve Van Kooten/Courier Press)

District holds community forum to gather input

 

By Steve Van Kooten

 

‘If’ is a powerful word. It’s the difference between knowing and planning; the fine line that delineates possibilities from certainties.

On the evening of December 18, the Prairie du Chien School District gave the community a chance to consider a big ‘if’: moving grades six through eight from Bluff View Intermediate School to the high school.

Bluff View Middle School and High School principal Doug Morris led a forum focused on how the high school building could accommodate the influx of approximately 200 students from Bluff View. The high school currently hosts approximately 300 students for grades 9--12.

“What I’d like to do tonight is give you the plan that I’ve got right now and let you help me make it better,” Morris told the audience.

Morris said he collaborated with faculty and student leadership at both schools to formulate the plan presented at the meeting. He also stressed the plan was still a work in progress and presumes that the district would not make any cuts to staff or programming.

“That’s my plan until I’m told otherwise,” he said. “I’m going with a perfect world where I get to keep everyone and everything.”

The board of education is looking at cuts to programming and staff as a possibility if the district fails to pass a referendum this coming spring; however, the district has not made any definitive plans to make cuts at this time.

District Administrator Andy Banasik has stressed that the district and board of education have not decided whether the BV students will be moved to the high school.

 

Schedules

“One of the big things that we have to do is keep the high school and the middle school separated as much as I can,” Morris said. “That’s priority number one for me: that I keep it so they are not mixing together in the building.”

The plan presented by Morris addressed concerns about morning routines, passing times between classes and bell schedules, which would all be different for the two school populations.

“There are zero passing periods where the kids are in the halls at the same time,” said Morris. “High school still stays on their A/B block, and the middle school stays with their 45-minute classes.”

If the district cuts staff, keeping the two populations separated during these times may become difficult because faculty may have to teach more grade levels.

The schedule adjusted flex times during the school day to keep student lunch periods after 11 a.m. and maintain a 15-minute period between high school and middle school meal times.

Students would still have the same amount of flex time during the day, according to Morris.

He also addressed the school’s other meal time, saying, “Breakfast is a concern for me. Right now, kids go to the cafeteria for breakfast. That’s 500 kids.”

The school could handle breakfast in a few different ways. Two possibilities were to have breakfast delivered to middle school classrooms, or the cafeteria could be divided into two segregated areas.

Morris’ plan presented a solution to keep the groups separated during morning bus drop-off, but he admitted that he did not have a solution to bus pick-up in the afternoon. School officials will monitor groups, but they will have to wait together at the end of the school day.

In the morning, the middle school and high school students will have two separate entrances on the south side of the building. The entrances are on the same side of the building for safety reasons.

“We want a single point of entry. That way, I have eyes on every student before they come into the building,” Morris said. “All the data says we have to have that.”

 

Building layout

In the presented plan, all of the teachers have their own classrooms. The only exception was the building’s science labs; there are five science teachers and only four labs.

“Every teacher has to have their own classroom. I’ve been in a school before where teachers were pushing around a cart from room to room, and that is really hard,” Morris said.

He used a floor plan to show that most of the high school’s academic classes would be on the upper floor of the school and the middle school’s classes would be on the ground floor. The schools’ classes would be grouped together.

Morris said the high school currently has seven empty classrooms.

The plan also has separate locker areas, locker rooms and restrooms.

“We would have dedicated locker rooms for each gender at each school, so we would not be mixing students,” said Morris.

Bluff View students would gain access to the high school’s weight room.

Morris said student leadership suggested a hall monitor program to help ensure students from one school do not go to bathrooms designated for the other. He also said the school would have to change their policy to close bathrooms that have been vandalized.

The HS library would need to make changes as well. Morris suggested the library could decrease sparsely used seating areas to bring in age-appropriate books for the middle school students. The biggest obstacle is finding enough space.

“My fear is we can’t bring enough middle school books over here,” Morris said. “We don’t want to get rid of any books.”

Additional storage space for books could be made by relocating school records from an adjacent space. The district can also audit their book repository to get rid of outdated books, books that have been replaced with new editions and books for classes that are not taught anymore.

The district offices could be moved out of the high school. That move would relocate four staff and an area for school records but would open more room for other departments, including the school district’s nurse.

Morris is expected to present options to the Board of Education at a working session meeting on January 6. The board expects to decide on the issue early next year.

 

Other concerns

Morris said his plan is far from complete, and some of the issues raised by faculty, students and community members don’t have obvious answers:

• There are still many logistical issues that have to be resolved with the school’s layout, the schedule and the faculty, even if the district manages to avoid cutting resources.

• Storage space remains an obstacle, especially for the art departments.

• Finding areas for middle school departments, including the intervention center, rehabilitation and therapy areas and a sensory room, may take some more time and creative thinking to satisfactorily address.

• Some of these services may need to utilize space in the school’s performing arts center (PAAC). Morris acknowledged that the arrangement would not be optimal due to the community’s usage of the PAAC facilities throughout the year.

• Another concern for parents was the loss of camaraderie for the students in grades 3-5 and 6-8. According to several teachers and community members, the bond between the two student bodies would be detrimental for the schools.

• The district sees enrollment decreasing for at least the next four years and no guarantee the population will recover immediately thereafter. But if Prairie du Chien’s fortunes change, parents wondered if the school could handle the schools’ enrollment increasing after the middle school students are moved to the high school.

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