Newton schools reconfigured

Next week not only signals the start of school for hundreds of students in the Newton school system but a new school configuration for grades five through eight.
Students in the fifth and sixth grades will attend  Santa Fe 5th/6th Center, and seventh and eighth-grade students will attend Chisholm Middle School for the first time this school year.

A typical day
at Santa Fe

Fifth-grade students at Santa Fe will not see a huge change in their school days when they enter their new school.
Santa Fe will no longer be considered a middle school. Many of the classrooms look similar to elementary school rooms with groups of desks and brightly colored bulletin boards.
“We want to take the benefits of middle school and the benefits of elementary school and merge them into one,” said Santa Fe Principal George Leary.
Breakfast begins at 7:40 a.m. at Santa Fe. Students can enter the building at 7:50. Classes begin at 8 a.m. and are released at 3:05 p.m.
Students will be assigned to teams of three teachers. Usually, they will be in classes of about 25 students with 75 students on a team. The students will switch teachers for different subjects.
“There will be three adults who know your name and will know you on a more personal level,” Leary said.
The students will have lockers, but their classes will be next-door to each other, and the students will be monitored during passing periods, Leary said.
Leary said teachers know none of the students entering Santa Fe will have had experience with lockers. They anticipate spending time helping students learn how to use the lockers and will help students who forget their combinations, Leary said.
The curriculum will not change for students in the fifth and sixth grades.
Students in the fifth and sixth grades will not be involved in sports. However, the Latchkey program will be extended to Santa Fe and be opened to sixth graders.
Discipline at Santa Fe is focused on changing the inappropriate behavior and will not be based on the district’s points system, Leary said.

Typical day
at Chisholm

Supervision of students at Chisholm starts at 7:45 a.m. School starts at 8:10 a.m. and releases at 3:15 p.m.
Students at Chisholm will have seven classes and one 25-minute flex period. Students have lockers and four-minute passing periods. They will have a different teacher for each of their classes.
Students will have core courses in English, math, social studies and science with a semester each spent in writing and technology.
In the technology course, students learn basic life skills, such as cooking and sewing, as well as do projects using technology, such as producing their own movie.
Chisholm students will be disciplined through the points system. Students are given points for inappropriate behavior. For example, a student would receive five points for being distracted in class or 25 points for fighting. When a student receives 75 points, the school can convene an expulsion hearing.

Changes
at Chisholm

The curriculum at Chisholm will change a little this year, Adamé said.
The school is adding an agriculture appreciation class.
And Adamé said she hopes Chisholm can build more programs that will be jumping-off points for programs at the high school, such as robotics or FFA.
Chisholm has received a grant for an after-school program, which once only was available at Santa Fe.
Adamé said she hopes the school can offer Spanish and drama and give students exposure to other extracurricular activities in the after-school program that may transition into high school.
“In middle school, it is a time kids are willing to experiment,” she said.

Advantages
of reconfiguration

Both principals said having all the students from the affected grades in the same buildings will enable teacher collaboration on curriculum.
“Collaboration was harder to do because we were across town,” Adamé said.
Extra curricular sports will be available for Chisholm students, and Don Cameron, assistant Chisholm principal, said the new configuration will be easier on students and coaches because all the athletes will be in one building.
Chisholm had received some outside funding to upgrade technology that Santa Fe had not.
Entering this year, Chisholm has further upgraded classrooms with smartboards, so all students will receive the benefits of technology in the classroom, Adamé said.
“Having all kids together offers the same opportunities for all kids,” Adamé said. “No matter how hard we try, it doesn’t happen when we are in all different buildings.”

Challenges

Perhaps the largest challenge the principals said they would face is the number of students in the schools.
Both middle schools have averaged about 380 students per school. With the addition of the fifth-graders into the mix, each school will have more than 500 students.
“My concern is with 520 students what measures can we take to still make it a family — a team within a team,” Leary said.
To accommodate the new influx of students, funds from a bond issue passed in 2007, were used to add new classrooms to both schools. Some rooms were remodeled at Santa Fe, and a new gym and weight room were built at Chisholm.
Chisholm and Santa Fe also had a friendly cross-town rivalry, Adamé said. She said she hopes the students can come together in one unit.
Adamé said the seventh and eighth grades will be split into two teams each. There will be students who attended both Santa Fe and Chisholm last year on all teams.
“Obviously this year will be the toughest year to get over the allegiance they felt to their school,” she said.