The start of a two-year transition from a junior high to middle school model for the Iowa City Community School District has gone smoothly, according to district officials.
Sixth graders were taken from elementary schools and added to the new middle school model in the hopes of providing a fulfilling school experience as opposed to the “blip” of seventh and eighth grade that many believed was too short-lived to create a lasting impact.
As this year of transition begins, District Superintendent Matt Degner said the overall feedback to the change has been positive.
“We’re still early in the school year here, and I know we still anticipate there will be some things that we need to work out as we go along,” he said. “I think we’re off to a great start and appreciate the flexibility of our staff, students, and parents as they adjust to this new model.”
Above all, the district’s main goal with the change is to build meaningful relationships with students at the middle school level, Degner said.
“That was the struggle,” Degner said, describing his time as a former junior high principal. “We only had them in seventh grade and eighth grade, and it felt like by the time you built relationships with families and students, they were already moving on to the high school experience.”
In addition to this extra year, each middle school has added a plethora of new clubs and extracurriculars to enhance student engagement.
School board member Lisa Williams said the middle schools were receptive to feedback from seventh and eighth graders last year about what they would like to study and what types of activities they would like to be involved in after school.
“They really tried to tailor the offerings around what the students wanted,” she said. “So, you see a little bit of difference between all three of our middle schools, but that difference is driven by what the students are interested in.”
With the sizable change came some challenges. Construction, valued at $32 million, centered around accommodating the new influx of students and halted hopes of entirely smooth sailing, Williams said. Both the North Central and Southeast middle schools are now utilizing temporary classrooms for select courses until construction is fully complete.
Williams said they plan to stop using the temporary classrooms before November.
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School Board President Ruthina Malone said the influx of new students has also given way to traffic difficulties, but she is proud of the community’s effort in navigating the challenge.
She referenced Southeast’s Principal Michelle Cook who “has been amazing” both with her staff and the district’s staff.
Additionally, the school has built a temporary barrier to keep students from cutting across the middle of the street, and the City of Iowa City has performed traffic studies for the school district, Malone said.
“It’s really been all hands-on deck across the community,” Malone said.
The district has put into place the High Reliability Schools Model to take in community feedback, through which administrators regularly survey students and parents.
“It’s really important to collect real time data on what’s going right and what’s going wrong with the schools,” Williams said.
District members said they are excited for the new change. Malone said she wishes her own daughter would have been able to experience the new middle school model.
“It was a blink of an eye. Having that additional year would’ve allowed more maturity, more connections with a vast variety of different people, different students,” she said. “I truly do think that our sixth graders were ready for this move.”