ANSONIA -- Easing transitions for elementary school students and giving middle school children more electives are part of a district-wide restructuring the Ansonia Public Schools will undertake next year in hopes of improving classroom performance.
Starting next fall, students in kindergarten and grades one through six will attend both Prendergast and Mead elementary schools as part of a preliminary restructuring plan. Ansonia Middle School will house students in the seventh and eighth grade,s as well as the district's prekindergarten; and Ansonia High School will host Pine Academy, the school's alternative education program, in addition to its students in grades nine to 12.
The changes are pending state Board of Education approval, said Supt. of Schools Carol Merlone.
The city Board of Education will have a special meeting at 6 p.m. next Wednesday at Ansonia High School to review the pending changes as well as to evaluate a report prepared by Cambridge Education, an education consulting firm in New York.
Merlone said she opted to change the makeup of the school buildings instead of replacing most of the district's staff, which was its only other option.
"Given the limited choices on what we were able to do, we had to affect district-wide," she said. "I chose option two instead of option one."
The changes, Merlone said, will allow the middle school to offer more electives and provide more room for the prekindergarten program.
Elementary school students, she said, will have to go through fewer building transitions than they do under the current system.
"The sixth-graders will be kept in an elementary setting for one more year and we'll have lower class sizes in grades K, one and three," she said. "For the seventh and eighth grades, it's an opportunity to build smaller learning groups and "¦ to build newer enrichment programs in Spanish and reading." It will also give alt-ed students better access to academic and social help in the high school that they don't receive at the current Pine Academy, the superintendent said.
The shake-up is prompted by the district failing to meet state standards for five years at Mead and four years at Ansonia Middle School.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind laws, Title I schools identified as "in need of improvement" for three consecutive years must develop a school or district restructuring plan for the 2009-10 school year.
Merlone said they have to focus particularly on improving the achievement of special education students, those who receive free and reduced lunch, and minority students.
Currently, Prendergast teaches students in grades pre-K through two, Mead School has grades three through five, and the middle school has students in grades six through eight.
Pine Academy, with more than 30 students, is currently hosted at the Boys and Girls Club of the Lower Naugatuck Valley in Shelton. The alt-ed program was to relocate next fall to the new Boys and Girls Club clubhouse on Howard Avenue.
Merlone said next Wednesday's meeting will be for board questions, but she will schedule community meetings to get input from parents and residents.
"I hope [parents] are as positive about it as we are," she said. "We feel the parents are very supportive of the school district, and we're looking to host forums and in this way, we can speak to the parents on the plan."
Deborah Richards, chief of the state Board of Education's bureau of Accountability Compliance and Monitoring, said 15 school districts throughout the state are in the midst of restructuring their schools.
Ansonia is one of three to start the process this academic year, she said, along with Stamford and Danbury schools.
Richards said improvements in the Cambridge review go beyond testing. We look at a variety of data," she said. "We look at attendance figures, graduations, and look at that along with the curriculum."