By Mary Stevens Decker
Reporter Newspapers
The Lake Washington School District (LWSD) has made clear its commitment toward the establishment of four year high schools.
What stands in the way now is more school buildings.
Lake Washington School District Superintendent Dr. Chip Kimball announced last Friday, Feb. 6, an initiative to change the configuration of grade levels within schools, shifting away from the current K-6, 7-9 and 10-12 model, and turning high schools into grades 9-12.
The impetus for the change is tied to the LWSD’s Vision 2020 plan to ensure that all students are college-ready and prepared to compete in the global workforce by the year 2020.
“Across the state, most high schools are 9 through 12,” said Kimball. “The question has been asked ‘why not?’ here.” He admitted it is “a complex issue, driven by facilities and philosophy.” The main driver of the initiative is making sure that students in grade nine, a time at which they are already accumulating credits and a grade-point average for their high school transcript, are being treated — and seeing themselves — as freshmen in high school, rather than junior high kids.
“How do they take high school seriously when they’re sitting inside a junior high?,” said Kimball.
In addition to influencing their study habits and attitude toward college, putting freshman on the same campus as high school sophomores, juniors and seniors allows advanced students to take higher-level courses without being bused to another location. Furthermore, it allows skilled athletes to compete at the high school level. Under the current school configuration, a ninth grade athlete can not “play up” at the high school level if the junior high campus has a program for the same sport.
Yet another consideration is how the shift to 9-12 high schools will affect students in middle schools or junior high schools. There are several different options, Kimball stated.
Research has shown that a 7-8 configuration is the worst; 6-8 is the most common and supported by a large body of research; 5-8 is growing in popularity and research is becoming more supportive; and K-8 is seeing significant movement, especially in large urban and smaller districts.
Elimination of transition time provides up to eight months of additional learning for students.
Kimball noted that “the junior high model looks and feels more like high school with seven periods and seven teachers,” whereas a middle school model can be a mix of one teacher all day or block scheduling that allows a few teachers to split various subjects.
While strengthening college pathways is the No. 1 reason for the proposed reconfiguration in the LWSD, Kimball mentioned other factors to support the initiative.
All-day kindergarten is increasingly in demand and legislators are seeing the importance of providing this educational advantage to all students on an equitable basis.
To make all-day kindergarten viable for all students, “we need more room,” Kimball stated. “Do we build more elementaries? Or make more capacity by moving grade levels around?”
A decision to proceed with the school reconfiguration must be made by June 2009, in order to put a possible bond levy on the ballot by 2010. Voters in the LWSD would be asked to vote on a bond levy to fund the expansion of the four existing high schools (Redmond, Lake Washington, Juanita and Eastlake) or to build a fifth high school.
