Stuck in the middle? Maybe not

For the parents at this school meeting, the question was a no-brainer: How many of you want to see your sixth-graders stay in elementary school rather than move on to middle school?

About 50 hands shot up. Middle school, they said, was too big, too scary, too much for an 11-year-old.

The parents, mostly from Mayberry Street Elementary near Silver Lake, agreed to push the Los Angeles Unified School District to reconfigure their elementary school. Among other requirements, they would need the approval of their principal and local superintendent.

“This is serious for us,” said Joseph Lightfoot, who organized last month’s meeting and has a son in fifth grade. “It’s time to take action.”

The movement to keep sixth-graders in elementary school has been gaining momentum for several years within the district and elsewhere. The idea is being driven by parents who fear the crowding, safety and academic problems associated with middle schools. In the last five years, L.A. Unified has added sixth grade to at least 14 schools that ran from kindergarten through fifth grade.

“The movement to move sixth grade back has been a topic of conversation for a long time,” said Ronni Ephraim, the district’s chief instructional officer for the elementary level. “But now as elementary enrollment is decreasing, there is room for the conversation.”

Enrollment within L.A. Unified has seen steady declines in the last few years as families leave the area for more-affordable housing elsewhere, among other reasons.

“As educators we ask ourselves: When is the best time to leave elementary school and go to middle school? Well, the answer is complicated,” Ephraim said.

Los Angeles Unified began shifting sixth grade from elementary schools in the late 1980s when junior highs nationwide were converted to the sixth- through eighth-grade middle school model. At the time, educators said moving sixth-graders to a campus with seventh- and eighth-graders was better for them developmentally. By 1997, all L.A. Unified elementary schools had sent their sixth grades to middle schools.

Although local district Supt. Richard Alonzo, who oversees schools in the Silver Lake area, said he typically supports principals’ and parents’ requests, he called the movement a “Band-Aid.” It doesn’t meet the district’s goal of improving instruction or solve its space problem at middle schools, he said.

Alonzo and other advocates say middle school is the best place for a sixth-grader. Middle schools offer a variety of classes and have specialized instructors in such areas as drama, the arts and athletics. Teachers are trained to deal with the social and emotional changes an 11- or 12-year-old experiences in the sixth grade.

“You’re not meeting their developmental needs” by keeping them in elementary school, said Al Summers, a division director at the Ohio-based National Middle School Assn. “The tendency is to put them in a K-6 ... building and teach them like big elementary kids.”

Summers and others said delaying middle school by a year does little for sixth-graders who are ready for a new, more stimulating environment with teachers who are prepared for them.

Nationwide, there is ongoing debate over the most appropriate grade school configurations. Johns Hopkins and Duke universities, among others, have conducted research on the subject as cities such as New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia have begun to reconfigure their middle-school grade levels.

L.A. Unified conducted its own evaluation in 2005 to determine the effect that attending a K-6 elementary school has on sixth- and seventh-grade achievement. The study found that overall, students who attended sixth grade at an elementary school did better over two years than those in sixth grade at a middle school.

Parents say that’s because of three components. “It’s small, it’s safe ... it’s nurturing,” said Lightfoot, who is also chapter president for a local parents group.

“I hear King is big,” said Claudia Mora referring to enrollment at Thomas Starr King Middle School near Silver Lake. “I’m a little scared.”

Although her son, Erick, is just 4, Mora thinks it’s important to look ahead, particularly because Erick is autistic and she would like to see him continue to get the personal academic attention he receives at Mayberry for as long as possible.

“We need [a] small school for better education,” said Mora who handed out fliers for the meeting that included such education leaders as charter school operator Steve Barr, school board member David Tokofsky and incoming board member Yolie Flores Aguilar.

Parents said King’s overcrowding causes a variety of problems: King students attend school on a year-round schedule, and teachers at the school with more than 2,600 preteens and teenagers are stretched thin. Some parents worry that the school’s academic performance is suffering.

“It’s like sending them to the jungle,” said Monica Escobar, a parent of a second- and third-grader at Clifford Street Elementary School, which feeds into King. The sixth-grade class at King is more than four times the size of Clifford’s K-5 enrollment.

To ease their transition into district middle school, most sixth-graders have two teachers for four academic subjects, allowing for smaller groups and more personalized attention.

Still, parents such as Escobar say they want their children to remain in an elementary school where students stay in one class and teachers and principals know them.

“There is a sense of community,” Lightfoot said.

In order for an elementary school to expand to include sixth grade there must be adequate space for the students, district officials said. After space is determined, the approval process -- which can take up to a year -- begins at the local district level.

But space is not the only factor. At Rosewood Avenue Elementary, near West Hollywood, for example, the request to add sixth grade was denied because officials said enrollment at middle schools it feeds into would be adversely affected. Officials also consider whether sixth-grade middle school teachers would be displaced or whether they could teach at the newly configured elementary school.

Parents said including sixth grade at some elementary schools would also help reduce the number of students at schools such as King. Kate McFadden-Midby, who teaches at a year-round L.A. Unified school, said she welcomed any solution to remove her daughter’s future middle school from the year-round system.

“Year-round is the worst thing you can” have at a school, said McFadden-Midby.

Relief for King, however, is in the works. Thomas Calhoun, a school district development manager for new construction, said a neighboring high school would be converted to a sixth- through 12th-grade campus by 2009 and a new middle school in the area would reduce the number of students at King. By 2012, King and other L.A. Unified year-round schools are legally required to move to a traditional two-semester calendar.

For some parents, those dates are too far off. Their sons or daughters will be on their way to high school by then. But some believe in the K-6 configuration so wholeheartedly, they won’t stop until it’s done.

“If I can’t get it for my own kid,” Lightfoot said, “I’ll still push for it.”

angie.green@latimes.com