Trend of K-8 academies draws support, concern from St. Johns County parents

At a meeting of parents in February, St. Johns County School District officials laid out plans to convert Mill Creek Elementary School in the World Golf Village area from a traditional K-5 elementary school to a K-8 school, otherwise known as an academy.

The district said that, after unsuccessful attempts to purchase land for a new middle school, the option made the most sense to relieve overcrowding at Pacetti Bay Middle School. The transition would be phased in over several years with this year's fifth-graders continuing on at Mill Creek and seventh-graders added in the next year before the school officially became a K-8 school in 2020-21.

Administrators emphasized that upperclassmen would be given their own wing in the expansion, and students and staff would be safely shielded from onsite construction.

Current Mill Creek Elementary principal Amanda Reidl assured parents that sixth- through eighth-grade students would have all the same offerings available to them as other middle-schoolers, including changing classrooms, taking advanced courses and electives, band and interscholastic athletics, as well as leadership opportunities.

But not everyone was happy, and some parents are now trying to fight the decision.

Jen Roggen, whose son is currently in the fifth grade, said her main problem with the situation was that her son would be missing the feeling of "stepping up" to a middle school building and the concern that he might be denied academic or extracurricular opportunities.

"Although Mill Creek has a wonderful leader, it will take several years to get up to speed with other middle schools," Roggen told The Record. "Also, my son would benefit greatly from the atmosphere of a large middle school which would foster growth and independence."

Roggen has filed a hardship waiver with the district hoping that her son will be allowed to attend Pacetti Bay as planned before the school board approved the Mill Creek conversion.

According to the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, from the 1970s to 2000, the number of public middle schools in the U.S. grew more than seven-fold. These middle schools replaced both traditional K-5 primary schools and junior high schools, serving grades 7-8 or 7-9. However, over the past 20 years — and the last decade in particular — that trend has been reversed, with more new construction K-8s coming online, as well as the conversion of K-5s to K-8s.

That shift can be seen here in St. Johns County.

Over the past five years or so, the district has opened three new K-8 schools: Liberty Pines Academy, Patriot Oaks Academy and Valley Ridge Academy. Another two — Palm Valley Academy and Freedom Crossing Academy — are set to open in August.

"We have found K-8s are an effective way to deal with high-growth areas like Nocatee," said Nicole Cubbedge, director of facilities, planning and growth management.

And while Cathy Mittlelstadt, deputy superintendent of operations, acknowledged there were cost efficiencies in K-8 academies, she added, "I think the [school] board has been very clear that we're not all in on the K-8 game, that we will continue to build elementaries where it makes sense to do so."

A recent report by Education Next, a think tank that researches education policy, looked at how academic achievement in K-8 environments compares with that in a middle-school environment. For the purposes of the study, hundreds of New York City public school students in grades 3 to 8 were tracked over six years.

"When students move to a middle school, their academic achievement falls substantially relative to that of their counterparts who continue to attend a K-8 school. What's more, their achievement continues to decline through middle school," the authors of the report noted.

The study goes on to evaluate the findings, including whether students entering middle school as the youngest cohort in the school made them feel less mature or confident, or whether smaller class sizes — as is usually the case in K-8s — helped boost achievement.

April Doughtry, the parent of two Mill Creek students, said she thought the extra three years at the school would be a positive experience for her children.

"I think it's giving them a chance to be kids, that we're not rushing them," said Doughtry, who is also a fourth-grade teacher at Durbin Creek Elementary School.

Those on the other side of the issue point to concerns about younger students interacting on the same campus as older students, or that it could make transitioning to high school harder.

Molly Major, the parent of a Mill Creek fifth-grader, said in a March 20 email to school officials that the district had offered no "assessment of how students put through the proposed process will adjust to being ninth-graders after being school leaders for four years."

Major said she would likely have supported the transition had it not been rolled out at the last minute, according to Major, who in the same letter to the district took issue with "the planning process, due diligence and communication."

According to Middlestadt, the parent meeting in February was not intended as a forum to gather input from parents.

She said the idea had originated from the superintendent and was presented to the school board who approved it.

"And by that point," Cubbedge said, "we had exhausted all other options."