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Old Saybrook Weighs Fourth Grade Move

Old Saybrook’s Board of Education (BOE) and superintendent of schools are weighing the merits of switching the location of the town’s 4th grade from the middle school to the elementary school. A BOE demographics subcommittee will make a presentation to the full board onThursday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. in Old Saybrook High School.

Old Saybrook Middle School (OSMS) has a rare configuration: It serves students from 4th grade through 8th grade. In fact, according to research compiled in 2018 by MCH Strategic Data, that configuration doesn’t exist in the United States at all—or at least not in large enough numbers to appear in the company’s data.

“The most common middle school structure, 13,432 of them, is grades 5 through 8,” said Superintendent of Schools Jan Perruccio. “And then there’s 7 through 9, and 4 through 6 schools. These are your more common structures.”

Ever since 2013, when Perruccio began as superintendent, parents have expressed concern about their 4th graders’ readiness to leave Kathleen E. Goodwin Elementary School for OSMS.

“They’ve had specific concerns and asked for additional steps to be taken in the transition process, and we’ve implemented some of those,” she said. “They’ve also expressed concern about how young 4th graders are. They’re 9- and 10-year-olds and they’re in school with 7th and 8th graders—you know, 13- and 14-year-olds at the end of 8th grade. And that the age span—some parents felt—is just too big.

“And in fact, there is some research to say that that age span is not ideal at the middle school grade because there’s such a variety,” Perrucio explained. “The nine-year-old is so different from the 13-year-old. And there’s so much growth. One of the research articles that we’re presenting at the BOE meeting actually says that this is the second busiest period of intellectual, social, and emotional growth—infancy is the first and then these middle years is the second, from 11 to about 14. And since you have so much growth during that short period of time, there really is a huge difference between a 9-year-old and a 13-year-old.”

Leading Up

The demographics subcommittee was formed over a year ago to examine the changes in the school’s population, including decreasing enrollment and the increasing numbers of students with “higher needs,” Perruccio said.

The district has reached out to parents, teachers, administrators, and students to ascertain how such a change would affect all concerned. Invitations to participate in focus groups were e-mailed to parents with children in district schools as well as to school staff.

“We’ve had three focus groups, one in the morning, one midday, and one in the evening, so we could try to capture as many people as possible,” Perruccio said. “That included parents and faculty and administrators, a board member in one case.”

In addition, a stakeholders’ survey was targeted to teachers and to parents of 3rd graders, who are about to go through the transition to middle school, as well as to parents of 4th and 5th graders, who recently made that transition.

“Fourth- and 5th-grade teachers in the survey came out very pro keeping the students at OSMS,” Perruccio said. “The teachers of the younger grades really would love to see the kids come to them. Everybody wants to teach kids!”

The district has also surveyed the 6th-grade students. A special four-question, open-ended survey was given to the district’s 6th graders in January while they were at school.

“We thought developmentally [6th graders] would be able to give us some good thoughts—and they did,” Perruccio said. “There’s enough distance from the transition that it might be less emotional for them and they could logically explain to us what it was like to go through the transition.”

The 6th-grade students “were very divided and very balanced in the way they saw things,” Perruccio said. “They were able to say, ‘Here’s something that would be good about it, here’s something that might be bad about it, here’s how I felt about it.’ And they were really good barometers for what people might be thinking.

“It was good for them to have that opportunity and we will provide feedback to them after this presentation at the board meeting,” she said.

Fifty-one people participated in the focus groups—with the largest number of parents attending the evening session—and 134 parents responded to the survey. Perruccio estimates that two-thirds to three-quarters of 2nd- and 3rd-grade parents who’ve weighed in support having 4th graders at Goodwin Elementary School, and “a little over 50 percent of the parents of 4th-or 5th graders and parents who have both 2nd- and 3rd graders and 4th, 5th graders also supported it,” she said.

Asked to characterize parents’ responses, Perrucio said, “Generally, what I found both in the survey and in the focus groups is people told very personal stories. Parents who haven’t sent their children through the transition yet have expressed anxiety and concern [for a] lack of readiness for their children. People who feel the other way from that same group are saying, ‘I think my child’s ready to move on, ready for addition responsibilities and freedoms.’

“For example, at OSMS at the end of the school day, students can just leave the school building and walk over to Park & Rec,” she continued. “And that’s a 4th grader doing that and some parents feel their child’s ready for that and some parents feel their child isn’t. On the other side, the OSMS parents whose children have already gone through it tell stories of a child being very nervous and anxious and feeling like the first few months were really difficult, and then others saying the transition was easy and my child’s just thriving.”

The cost of making the change would be limited to one-time moving expenses as well as costs related to setting up technology in the Goodwin classrooms, Perruccio said. As staff is shared at OSMS between the 4th and 5th grades, a move would mean some additional staff would travel between schools. But this isn’t unusual.

“Every year we move staff around and we have quite a few staff members who go between two or among three buildings,” she said.

The move could benefit all the OSMS students.

“What we anticipate will happen is that 5th and 6th grades may be more of a team and then 7th and 8th grades will be more of a team, which, the research indicates, might be good for 6th graders,” Perruccio said. “There was a time when K through six was your typical elementary structure. And some of this research indicates that 6th graders would benefit from a little extra time way from the 7th- and 8th-grade social activity… So it could end up being a lower middle school, upper middle school structure within OSMS.”

A presentation on the proposal will be given at the Tuesday, Feb. 26 BOE meeting, followed by public comment. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. and will take place at the district’s Central Office at 50 Sheffield Street.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story stated the BOE demographics subcommittee would make a presentation at the BOE's Tuesday, Feb. 26 meeting; the presentation will be made  Thursday, Feb. 28 at a Special BOE meeting at 7 p.m. in Old Saybrook High School.