Combo Classes Not New For Waitsburg

WAITSBURG - Change is never easy and some parents in the community are having difficulty wrapping their minds around the fact that the Waitsburg fourth, fifth and sixth graders will be in intermediate, mixed-grade level classes next year.

However, combining grade levels is not a new concept for the district that has combined grade students in the past to handle enrollment fluctuations, district officials say.

Forty-eight children will be in the fourth, fifth and sixth split starting in the fall. The split class will help the district reduce its budget and will allow the district to better deal with decreasing enrollment, Superintendent Dr. Carol Clarke said.

The split class will have two teachers, Margie Douglas and Jennifer Stone, for all three grades.

Specialist teachers, including Jeff Bartlow, Brad Green and Rebecca Wilson, will also be teaching fitness, art and music for the split class.

The district staff and board members have visited other schools where split classes are proving successful and Clarke said they're continuing to search out more information.

Clarke said two students that would have been in Waitsburg's new split class this fall have been pulled out of the district since the announcement of the intermediate split classes.

However, she said one student "was no surprise" and was more related to other issues.

"It's a hard concept for people to get their heads around because it's non-traditional for our schools," Clarke said.

The split class idea came to be this past spring when the district learned it was losing more stu- dents than expected, which also meant a loss of state money to fund the district.

The split class idea was gener- ated and the schedule was created in April and May, Clarke said.

Now, the schedule could see some minor modifications, but "the concept is pretty well set," Clarke said.

Waitsburg School Board Member Dr. Randy Pearson said combining grade levels is not a new concept in the Waitsburg School District. He knows in the past decade there have been split classes to accommodate large groups of students in the middle grades.

"In the history (of the district), there have been a lot of instances of combo classes," Pearson said. "I think it makes sense this year."

Clarke said the district chose not to go with a fourth-fifth class and a fifth-sixth class because it seemed to cause perception issues about what students were more academically inclined.

According to the schedule for the split class this year, Douglas will be teaching math and science and Stone will be teaching language arts and social studies. All fourth, fifth and sixth graders will remain in the elementary building.

Clarke said the issues regard- ing core academic course work have been worked out for these intermediate classes. According to the schedule, sometimes the students are separated into grade levels, such as language arts and math, and sometimes the grades are combined for lessons, such as the fourth and fifth graders will be together for social studies.

They are all together for home- room. No student will miss any curricular offerings with the way the schedule is made, she added.

Homeroom will be based on an equal grade and gender distribution and will be used to take attendance, reading and skills enrichment. Skills enrichment is not study hall, but is a time at the end of every day where students can practice computer skills, take spelling and math quizzes and practice cursive handwriting un- der the supervision of an instructional assistant, Clarke said.

This skills enrichment time gives teachers the much-needed class prep time, but they will still be available in case of a classroom issue or may even remain in the classroom during this time, she said.

In addition to this split classes being a unique opportunity for children to learn and be successful, Clarke said they can use the schedule to separate some students who have had challenges together in the past.

"And to the best of our ability we will meet parent requests," she said.

The district did hold a parent information meeting on the inter- mediate classes and Clarke said a main concern voiced at that meet- ing was that fourth and sixth grad- ers are matured differently and that could cause problems. Clarke said she doesn't see the mixing of the age groups a problem because the students are interacting on the playground and hanging out together outside of school anyway. Plus, the students in the class will be all together under supervision.

"We can encourage positive relationship building," Clarke said.

And because the growth of the fourth, fifth and sixth grade classes doesn't seem to be monumental over the next two to three years, Clarke said the intermediate split class and its schedule will likely remain in place during that time. If enrollment does grow unex- pectedly in these grade levels, the continuance of the split classes will change.

"It doesn't mean a high-quality education will not be provided," she said. "And as far as we can tell, the kids are not struggling with (the idea). I think we'll get through it."

Pearson said because projected enrollment shows the numbers of students are going to remain lower for these grades, he's happy the district has found a solution that will be consistent for students.

"I'm really happy, too, with how the scheduling was laid out," Pearson said.