Escondido Promotes 6th Grade : Move Into Middle Schools to Ease Pinch Is Assailed

To make room for an influx of new students next fall, Escondido’s elementary schools will transfer their sixth-graders to middle schools, which currently are the domain of seventh- and eighth-graders, district trustees have decided.

The decision, made Monday night on a 5-0 vote, was opposed by some parents, who protested that the younger children are socially immature and would be out of their league when trying to cope with peer pressure from older students involving sex, smoking and other areas.

But trustees of the Escondido Union School District said shifting sixth-graders to middle schools was the best of several options in dealing with burgeoning student enrollment in Escondido, where virtually unchecked growth in recent years has outpaced the school district’s ability to build new schools.

The district’s elementary schools are overcrowded and rely on portable classrooms to house more than 10% of the district’s students, and officials expect an additional 900 students--enough to populate an additional 1 1/2 schools--during the 1987-88 school year. But the district does not have the money to build any new schools for several years, and trustees had considered double sessions, year-round schools and still more portable classrooms.

Monday night, they opted for educating the 1,200 sixth-graders in portable classrooms at the district’s three middle schools--Grant, Hidden Valley and Del Dios--where for the first year they will generally be segregated from the older children and receive essentially the same kind of schooling they would have received in elementary schools.

By the 1988-89 school year, the district wants to integrate the sixth-graders into the mainstream of the middle schools, thereby offering the youngsters a wider variety of classroom and extra-curricular choices that they could not get at the elementary schools, such as shop classes and band.

In the meantime, the district will explore the option of establishing three “partner schools” made up of relocatable classrooms at existing elementary schools, where they will share the same campuses and such common facilities as libraries, cafeterias and restrooms but operate on a slightly staggered schedule with their own staffs, principals and name identification.

These piggy-back schools are needed, the district says, to house the continuing influx of hundreds of students yearly.

Trustees acknowledged that moving sixth-graders to middle schools had not received across-the-board support from parents but said they thought it was more palatable than the other options.

“This has the most positives of any plan presented to us,” Trustee John Laing said.

Some parents protested that the idea of transferring sixth-graders was a knee-jerk solution that hadn’t been properly studied and sufficiently presented to parents. They suggested that the transfer at least be delayed until the 1988-89 school year so the affected students could be better prepared.

Board President Sid Hollins replied: “It’s time for us to move down the road. We can’t keep working the problem. We have to come to grips with it.”

In an effort to show parents that sixth-graders could cope on middle school campuses, the district invited three sixth-graders from Poway--whose middle schools have been grades 6 through 8 for years--to speak.

“I never saw a kid get trash-canned,” one offered.

Another said, “The eighth-graders will tease you, but that’s all, and if you just ignore them, they’ll lose interest.”

But some parents were not convinced.

“You are experimenting with our children,” Sharon Sill said. “There’s no way my fifth-grader will be ready (next year) for that environment. It’s like an R-rated movie. I’m thankful for private schools, and that’s where we’ll go.”

Luis Gonzalez told trustees that he, too, will send his children to a private school because “I cannot take the chance of my 11-year-old being bombarded by peer pressure.”

Another father said sarcastically that his son was looking forward to going to middle school a year early because he wanted to hang out at the convenience store nearby.

But the concept also had its supporters, including George McClure, who said: “Let’s be confident in the mores and values we’ve instilled in our kids. They (children with similar values) will find each other.”

Another parent, Jan Komancheck, said it is the parents’ duty, not the trustees’, to prepare the younger children for middle school. “We need to, as parents, give them the self-confidence they’ll need,” she said.