K-8 School’s Parents Need Facts, Board Says

Though the school board plans to preserve Fred Moiola School’s unusual kindergarten to eighth-grade format, officials say that parents need more knowledge of how its upper grades differ from those at regular middle schools.

Fountain Valley School District’s trustees said earlier this week that they do not have the votes required to convert the school for kindergarten through fifth grade, a controversial proposal set for final approval Feb. 27.

Sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders would have been sent to one of the four middle schools as early as next year under the proposal.

Four of the seven board members publicly sided with parents who want to keep Moiola as it is. But trustees said it is important that the community knows that its curriculum and activities will not be like those of a typical middle school.

Parents “should sign a document so they know they are going into an elementary setting,” Trustee Larry R. Crandall said. “If there’s enough kids to fill the classes and their parents choose this as an elementary school program, then we’ll make it available to them.”

Moiola pupils typically have two or three teachers a day, compared with middle schools’ five to six. Only three days of physical education are offered, compared with the middle schools’ five, and there are fewer electives and chances to take advanced-placement courses.

About 150 of the district’s 2,000 middle school-age students attend Moiola. Under open enrollment, they can go to any of the middle schools.

Parents who prefer the K-8 format, once the norm in Fountain Valley, say it gives students a chance to mature gradually.

“There’s no enrollment problem, no academic problem, no transition problem” when students go to high school, said Doreen Almanza, who has three of her four children enrolled at Moiola. “There’s no reason not to leave it the way it is.”