Baltimore education officials are proposing a major reorganization that would keep more students in their neighborhood schools through eighth grade and reduce the size of many large middle schools.
Under the proposal presented to the school board last night, schools chief Carmen V. Russo would close six schools, build two new ones and expand 11 neighborhood elementary schools to serve students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
The three-year plan would affect a quarter of the city's school buildings.
It's expected to be popular among parents in several neighborhoods who have asked school officials for years to find alternatives to failing middle schools with enrollments as high as 1,200 students.
The plan, which requires school board approval, is intended to strengthen communities, helping to keep middle-class families from deserting the city when their children come of school age.
"It is very clear parents want their children closer to home," said Russo.
Mount Washington Elementary School parents documented last year that the school was losing a large number of its students to county public schools and private schools, in part because parents were not willing to send their children to Fallstaff Middle School.
The plan calls for the construction of a middle school addition to Mount Washington Elementary, to be completed by fall 2005.
The proposed changes are the second phase of the most far-reaching restructuring of the 175 city schools in the past several decades. With enrollments shrinking and maintenance problems growing in aging school buildings, officials decided last year to close seven elementary schools and reorganize to run the system more efficiently.
Chief Operating Officer Mark Smolarz said the school system expects to spend about $70 million a year over the next five years to renovate and restructure schools. Part of that money would pay for this plan.
While the reorganization doesn't address academics, Russo said the system is creating more combined elementary-middle schools because student achievement at those schools is higher than at middle schools.
Years ago, the popular educational theory was that students in grades six through eight, who are going through an awkward developmental period, should be separated from elementary school students.
What school systems did wrong, Russo believes, was to group more than 1,000 middle-schoolers in one building.
