Middle School

AN UNDERFUNDED New York City middle school is the main focus of "Brooklyn Castle," the uplifting documentary story of how a chess program transforms the lives of inner-city students. Director Katie Dellamaggiore profiles Intermediate School 318, where teacher Elizabeth Vicary's after-school chess program had such a powerful effect on children that it became part of the curriculum and produced national champions. What becomes of a program so demonstrably successful and obviously effective?

Inside Nancy Lynn's sixth-grade classroom at the Warren G. Harding Middle School, students' reports - many decorated with crayon-colored covers - hang from a clothesline along a back wall. Glossy cutouts about magnets and electricity cover a strip of wall above the blackboard. Pictures of fall leaves - brown, orange, yellow - spruce up Lynn's bulletin boards. When the bell rings to signal the end of class periods, her students usually stay put. But just beyond her door, a flood of older students - seventh and eighth graders - pour into the hallway, clanging lockers and chattering among themselves as they rush along to their next classes.

A proposal to reorganize the Ridley School District by creating a middle school in the junior high building and moving ninth-grade students to the high school was presented to parents last week. Superintendent John Cochran told the 200 parents who attended a meeting at Edgewood Elementary School last Thursday that an administrative team has been studying the middle-school concept for more than a year and the research indicates that such a reorganization would be best for the district.

Phoenixville school board members have approved a plan that will create a middle school made up of grades five through eight, despite parent demands that the vote be delayed. Superintendent Carolyn Trohoski said the reorganization, which changes the junior high school into a middle school, needs to be in place by next September to reduce crowding in the district's four elementary schools. There are 1,848 pupils in grades one through six, 670 in junior high grades seven through nine and 548 students in the high school.

The Ridley School District should turn its junior high school into a middle school, moving ninth-grade students to the senior high school, Superintendent John S. Cochran has recommended. Cochran made the suggestion to the school board at its meeting Tuesday night after he reviewed studies presented by two district administrators. Cochran told the board that he wanted the district to implement the middle- school plan by September 1989. Under Cochran's proposal, the district's seven elementary schools would house kindergarten through fifth grade.

Pervis Ellison is perhaps the area's most recognizable middle school coach. The former 12-year NBA veteran is the coach of the New Beginnings Academy's middle school boys' basketball team. New Beginnings, which has students in kindergarten through 12th grade, is a new school in Chester. "It's not my intention on being a coach," said Ellison, who resides in Voorhees, Camden County. "I'm just giving back, so to speak. I just wanted to help the best way that I could. " The 41-year-old Ellison, who sought the position, said he will not get paid for coaching.

Consultants for the Downingtown Area School District recommended building a new middle school although it would cost $4 million more than if the district renovated a junior high. The Heery Program Management Inc. of Bala Cynwyd expected a new middle school to cost $15.4 million. Renovating and converting Lionville Junior High into a middle school was estimated at $11.4 million. The direct cost to the district would vary for either project, depending on the state reimbursement, consultant Stuart Lacy said Wednesday at a work session of the school board.

Despite some community and parent protests earlier this year, the Northeast will get a new high school and new middle school this fall under the final phase of a grade-reorganization plan announced Wednesday. The Samuel S. Fels Junior High School in Oxford Circle will become a senior high school over a three-year period. Starting this fall, the school will add 10th grade. The Woodrow Wilson Junior High School in Castor will become a middle school with sixth- through eighth-grade students.

The Tredyffrin Easttown school board approved the appointment of D. Allen Wolstenholme as the principal of Tredyffrin Easttown Intermediate School at a meeting Monday night. Wolstenholme has been acting principal at the school since September. The appointment becomes effective July 1. The board also accepted the resignation of John Reilly, a teacher at Valley Forge Elementary School. Superintendent George Garwood said Reilly served 15 years as a classroom teacher and 12 years as director of personnel.

In an unanimous vote, the Neshaminy school board approved the appointment of Ronald Daggett as principal of Neshaminy Middle School. Beginning July 1, Daggett will replace Ward McMasters, who is retiring. McMasters has been the middle school principal for six years. For Daggett, now an assistant principal at Neshaminy High School, the appointment to run the 782-student school caps a long career in the district. "I'm excited," said Daggett, 52. "It makes it extra special that the school board and the community has faith in me as a leader.

Friday was going to be a big day for the seniors of Penn Wood High School, the day they would get to buy prom tickets. "All of us have been talking about prom since January," Sabreen Abbass, 17, said. "All of us had our passes to come down and buy our prom tickets. We all had our dresses. " Instead, she had a day off she didn't want. She and her friends will get to buy their prom tickets eventually, but they don't know when or where. A blaze early Thursday that officials have declared arson has barred them from their Lansdowne school, its walls charred and windows boarded.

Two days before the School Reform Commission was scheduled to vote on closing Beeber Middle School, parent Katherine Stokes' phone rang. Beeber had been spared. Bowing to concerns about safety and a lack of choice for families, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. rescinded the recommendation Tuesday. Officials will instead work with the community to explore developing an arts academy to attract more students to the school. "We're just utilizing the recommendations that the community put forward," Hite said.

Two days before the School Reform Commission was scheduled to vote on closing Beeber Middle School, parent Katherine Stokes' phone rang. Beeber was spared, Stokes and others in the community said. It's been a roller-coaster ride for the school, which was not on the Philadelphia School District's initial closing list, but got put on a revised list, along with M.H. Stanton Elementary School in North Philadelphia. Officials informed the Beeber community Tuesday that it was being taken off the closing list.

  Two schools spent Thursday morning in lockdown as a SWAT team descended on the city's Feltonville section in response to a fabricated story by four adolescent students who said they were victims of a gun incident, authorities said. The children, ages 10 through 13, students at the Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, falsely accused a woman of pointing a "long gun" at them as they were walking to school, according to police. Authorities took the report seriously, letting no one in or out of the middle school or Barton Elementary, a kindergarten-through-second grade school on the same campus.

  A former administrator at Truebright Science Academy Charter School testified Thursday that the school lacked a curriculum, provided no services for students whose first language was not English, and told the Philadelphia School District it offered advanced courses that did not exist. During a hearing to determine whether Truebright deserves to have its charter renewed, Susan Farley-Ellison detailed the North Philadelphia school's academic shortcomings. Farley-Ellison, the school's supervisor of curriculum and instruction in 2010-11, said the school had textbooks but lacked a curriculum because the charter's chief executive told her the school could not afford one. She said the school did not have a program for students whose first language was not English.

Two schools spent Thursday morning in lockdown as a SWAT team descended on the city's Feltonville section Thursday, all in response to a fabricated story by four adolescent students who said they were victims of a gun incident, authorities said. The children, ages 10 through 13, students at the Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, falsely accused a woman of pointing a "long gun" at them as they were walking to school, according to police. Authorities took the report seriously, letting no one in or out of the middle school or Barton Elementary, a kindergarten through second grade school on the same campus.

METAL DETECTORS in elementary schools? Hell, yeah. Think that's a knee-jerk reaction? Well, not any more than the hand-wringing over the - gasp - sorry state of our society if we'd - shudder - stoop to such a thing. The reaction to Philadelphia school officials merely discussing the idea was typical: What message would it send? What proof is there that they work? There has to be another way. Safety doesn't come from metal detectors. It comes from community, good parenting . . . the Easter Bunny.

Nan Weinberg's son, a fifth grader at James Johnson Elementary School in Cherry Hill, had been convinced that he wanted to go to Beck Middle School next year. " 'I don't even want to think about Rosa,' " Weinberg recalls her son, Cole, saying, dismissing his other option for middle school in the district. After attending an open house at Rosa International Middle School, however, he changed his mind. "He just felt more comfortable there," Weinberg said. He couldn't get too excited, though.

Two area teenagers - a Downingtown High School East senior and a Cherry Hill High School East ninth grader - won honorable mentions in C-SPAN's national StudentCam competition, contest officials announced Thursday. "What's the most important issue the president should consider in 2013?" was the question students were asked to answer for this year's contest. Alexander Merker of Downingtown East asked President Obama to address Iran and nuclear weapons in his winning documentary video, Iran and America NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

A Downingtown High School East senior and a Cherry Hill High School East ninth grader - earned "honorable mention" in C-SPAN's national StudentCam competition, contest officials announced today. For this year's contest, students were asked to answer the question: "What's the most important issue the President should consider in 2013?" Alexander Merker of Downingtown High East asked President Obama to address the issue of Iran and nuclear weapons in his documentary video, "Iran and America NUCLEAR WEAPONS.