Parents Worried About Plan to Move 5th Graders to Middle Schools

BRAINTREE, MA - Moving the fifth graders of Braintree to the middle schools could be a tough sell for school officials.

Monday night, the school building committee held a forum on a new plan to renovate and expand East and South Middle Schools.

Originally, work on East Middle School was expected to be a renovation, but talks with the Mass. School Building Association led talks of an addition. The renovation and addition, combined with a similar project at South Middle School, would see the fifth graders moved to a newly constructed “school within a school” at both middle schools, freeing up 22 classrooms at the elementary schools, according to Hackett. Students in fifth grade would have their own space, but could possibly have classes with other middle school teachers.

The freed-up space would be used for libraries, music, art, tech labs, and small group acceleration. A plan was also laid out to construct separate gyms and cafeterias at the Flaherty and Ross Schools.

Students at the Flaherty, Hollis, Morrison, and Ross Schools would move to East, while South Middle would house students from Highlands and Liberty Schools.

Families with students at both middle schools due to the redistricting would be given the option to choose their school during the transition period.

The new plan, originally unveiled at a school committee meeting last week, had parents pushing for alternative ideas that kept students and teachers in their current location.

“That’s pretty isolating, their career is focused on elementary style teaching. Dumping them (at East Middle School) is great but that’s their home,” resident Ashley Steadman said, adding that she wanted to keep the students away from middle schoolers who are “going through the physical and emotional changes (fifth graders) should be kept in the dark about.”

Other parents expressed concern about fifth graders interacting with eighth graders and the age difference.

“Now we need to move kids that are not ready to go into middle school. I don’t want them on the bus with sixth, seventh, and eight graders. They’re too young for those conversations and language,” resident Jennifer Hanlon said.

Many of the recommendations from parents were not new to town officials, who said they discussed similar ideas in the past.

“Much what you have said had been considered and make sense. The fact of the matter is we have an opportunity to get $20 million,” Hackett said. “Several years ago there was a plan to do what you want for the elementary schools and that was voted down.”

Responding to some parents who wanted to renovate the elementary schools without the MSBA rather than move the fifth graders, Mayor Joseph Sullivan said there have been three attempts at an override, and two for a debt exclusion.

The town will have until Feb. 10 to notify the MSBA if they are interested in going ahead with a new renovation plan. The town council will vote on a $250,000 feasibility study on Feb. 23.