Middle School Pilot Program May Be Catching : Thousand Oaks: Los Cerritos educators want campus to become district’s second to join sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.

A pilot program bringing sixth-graders to Colina Middle School has been so successful that administrators at Los Cerritos Intermediate School now want to expand their Thousand Oaks campus to younger students, officials said.

Los Cerritos administrators, teachers and parents took the first step toward that goal Thursday night, giving a presentation to school trustees on the benefits of restructuring the school. Board members will vote on the proposal next month.

“We have had a tremendous, positive response from parents selecting that program (at Colina),” Assistant Supt. Richard W. Simpson said. “Los Cerritos is quite anxious to jump on that and become the second pilot middle school.”

Colina was the first school in Thousand Oaks to launch a middle school program, allowing 144 sixth-grade students to attend school with seventh- and eighth-graders for the first time this school year.

“We’re real excited about this,” Principal Jo-Ann Yoos said. “It’s not that what we’ve had isn’t a good system, it’s just that this is a better system.”

Educators say the middle school configuration enhances learning, since students in grades six, seven and eight have more in common developmentally, physically and intellectually.

Also, studies show that giving sixth-graders a transition between elementary and junior high school helps them adjust better than had they abruptly moved from one classroom with one teacher to six classrooms with as many as six teachers, officials said.

At Colina, sixth-graders rotate between three and four teachers instead of six, such as the schedule followed by seventh- and eighth-graders. To ease sixth-graders into the middle school environment, their classrooms are clustered together with a separate locker area.

“What we are hearing from them is that the transition is easier,” Simpson said. “They feel they have a real leg up on their buddies coming into seventh grade next year.”

Los Cerritos administrators had wanted their campus to become a pilot middle school at the same time as Colina, but district officials decided to wait and test only one school.

Since the experiment has worked so well, Simpson said, the school board will probably approve the expansion at Los Cerritos, which draws from central Thousand Oaks neighborhoods.

“There has been nothing as far as concerns or complaints,” he said of the experiment at Colina. “It’s been extremely positive.”

One reason for the success is because parents are given a choice: their sixth-grade child can stay at their neighborhood elementary school or attend middle school.

Parents whose children attend one of Los Cerritos’ six feeder schools would also be given that choice, Yoos said.

To inform parents about the proposal, Los Cerritos recently held two meetings to explain the reconfiguration and answer questions.

“I think it’s great,” said parent Mary Beth Eisenhard, one of about 35 parents who attended one of the meetings. Her son is an eighth-grader at Los Cerritos and her daughter will be in the seventh grade there next fall.

“I think the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-(grade) configuration gives us a longer time to prepare students to go to high school,” she said. “Plus, it’s going to give them a better feeling for the age they are at.”

And if parents don’t support their idea, they can keep their children in elementary school, Eisenhard said.

“It might not be for every child,” she said. “Parents have to make that individual decision.”