A whole new, complex world awaits after fifth grade

More teachers, bigger campuses and classmates who are virtual strangers make the middle school years some of the toughest.

[Times photo: James Borchuck] Eighth-grader Veronica Hannah, right, laughs with Jatalia Smith during peer mediation training at Pinellas Park Middle School.

By SHEILA MULLANE ESTRADA

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 29, 2000

The middle school years can come as a shock for students and parents alike.

For students, the familiar elementary teacher and classroom are gone. The larger middle school's geography is confusing. School work seems harder and more complex. Most other students are strangers. Puberty has arrived with its roller-coaster emotions and swiftly shifting attitudes.

For parents, children can become strangers overnight and acquire even stranger habits of behavior and dress. At school, instead of a single teacher, there now is a team of teachers to meet with as parents strive to make sure their child's needs are met.

Add to this mix the anxiety facing many parents as they make crucial decisions that can affect their children's success in high school, college, career and life -- and one gets a sense of the stress middle school years place on both parents and students.

What zoned middle schools offer

The majority of parents (about 85 percent) enroll their middle school child in one of the county's 17 zoned schools, where they can find opportunities to individualize their child's middle school experience.

"Most of our middle schools are very capable of responding to the concerns of parents and the needs of children," says Janice Rouse, assistant superintendent for middle schools. "I encourage parents to ask questions, to make an appointment in the fifth-grade summer to walk around their zoned middle school and talk with teachers and staff."

Middle school classwork is structured to teach the basics while guiding students in the discovery of a wide variety of academic interests and career possibilities. Grade levels are segregated into "houses" staffed by teams of teachers, psychologists and guidance counselors -- all there to help students make a successful academic and emotional transition between elementary and high school.

Honors classes in math and in foreign languages -- now called "world" languages -- qualify for high school credit.

All middle schools offer the Model School Achievement Program (MSAP) for sixth- through eighth-graders identified as drop-out risks.

Intramural sports programs in basketball, track, volleyball and cheerleading soak up burgeoning adolescent energies. After-school clubs offer students a chance to make new friends and pursue individual interests. Peer tutoring and counseling programs help students adjust to a new academic and social environment.

All middle schools have instrumental music programs and several (Seminole, Largo, Dunedin, Palm Harbor and Tarpon Springs) have strings programs.

Some schools do not qualify as magnet schools but offer "themed" programs.

Students at Madeira Beach Middle School study marine life and environmental issues through hands-on classroom instruction and field experiences on the waterfront campus and at an adjacent waterfront city park. A marine boardwalk, dock and lagoon provide an outdoor living classroom, while a new science classroom features a wet lab and touch tanks. The school's unique program also includes artificial reefs, a weather station, a wetland nursery and xeriscape gardens.

Although Bay Point Middle School is perhaps best known for its science and technology magnet, non-magnet students also benefit from magnet technologies located at the school.

Other specialty themed-programs or "attractors" will be adopted by most middle schools in the next two years as they prepare for 2003 implementation of a countywide "controlled choice" plan that will replace present court-ordered desegregation.

One big advantage for many parents in sending their children to a zoned school is transportation. If a child lives more than 2 miles from a school, the school system guarantees bus transportation to school. This service is not available for children enrolled in fundamental or charter schools and is provided on an arterial basis only for magnet school students. Students attending a school on a special attendance permit are not provided transportation.

The other, perhaps even bigger, advantage of a zoned school is that the child is automatically accepted and guaranteed a space in his or her zoned school. The parent doesn't have to do anything.

The boundaries of some school attendance zones will change next year as the school district implements the last desegregation busing rotation before the implementation of unitary controlled choice status in 2003. Parents will be notified by mail on Jan. 3, 2001, of any proposed school zone changes affecting their children and can react to those changes during public discussion meetings Jan 16, 17 and 18. Times and places of these meetings have not yet been announced.

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