Middle School

Architects hired by the Downingtown area school board have a plan for a new middle school - a doughnut-shaped building that would cost $23 million and sit behind the existing high school. Representatives of the Vitetta Group, an architectural firm in Philadelphia, described at the board's work session last week how they had arrived at the sketch design for a 1,200-student middle school. The district is pursuing plans to construct a new middle school after the school board voted last month, under intense public pressure, to scrap plans to build a new high school.

In a reversal of a decision made about two weeks ago, the school board has hired the Remington & Vernick engineering firm to supervise construction of the new middle school. The board voted, 5-4, on Wednesday to hire the firm for nearly $200,000. On May 17, the vote was 5-4 against hiring the firm. "For the sake of Haddon Township and to get the projects going, yes," board member Bonnie Richards said. Her decision triggered applause from a group of parents in the audience.

As promised, the newly elected Radnor Township school board has voted to keep the middle school in downtown Wayne and to open its previously closed committee meetings. The actions were taken Tuesday night at the board's first meeting since its post-election reorganization session on Dec. 1. The middle school site and the committee meetings have been extremely contentious issues in the Main Line district and were the central issues in the November board elections. Republicans fought off an unusually strong Democratic challenge to win all five contested seats, keeping all nine board positions in GOP hands.

Fourth and fifth graders in the Kingsway Regional School District shouldn't start holding their breath until they turn blue just yet. According to Superintendent Terrence Crowley, the district has a long way to go before plans are in place for students now in elementary school to begin attending a separate middle school in seventh and eighth grades. For years, students in grades seven through 12 have shared one school building in the Kingsway Regional School District. But over the last year, the school has begun to move toward separating the younger students from those in the senior high school.

The Ridley school board has adopted a plan, under study since early 1987, to convert the district's only junior high school to a middle school beginning in September. As approved at the board's business meeting Monday, the Ridley School District would be reorganized, changing the junior high, which includes grades seven through nine, into a middle school for grades six through eight. Ninth graders would move into the district's high school. Superintendent John S. Cochran said the change was recommended by the school district's Community Advisory Committee for the Middle School and the administration.

The empty West Catholic High School for Boys is one of several buildings the School District is considering for a new West Philadelphia middle school. "We need a middle school in that area," said William Thompson, School District spokesman. West Philadelphia, like most parts of the city, has experienced a baby boomlet, causing the School District to scurry about for classroom space. Thompson said the district has looked at other buildings in West Philadelphia, but declined to identify them.

The setting is middle school. The cast has that middle-school look, even if a little too well-scrubbed. And the target audience for two new prime-time movies that Nickelodeon is offering tonight and tomorrow night is middle school all the way. Both films have that blend of silliness and sophistication that tweens love, their older sibs loathe and their younger brothers and sisters don't quite get. They portray adults - with one...

In response to Delran residents' concerns that an addition to the middle school would create a traffic problem on an already busy Chester Avenue, a $3,000 to $5,000 study is underway to determine how streams of buses and extra cars would mix with existing traffic. The school board, which awarded the contract for the study Sept. 2 to the Medford traffic engineering firm of Horner & Canter Associates, wants to allay any fears that might accompany its $7.9 million construction referendum scheduled for next month.

Nearly half of New Jersey's middle school students admitted drinking alcohol at least once, some as early as age 11, according to a state survey released yesterday. At least 46 percent of the nearly 11,000 seventh and eighth graders surveyed last year said they had used alcohol, up from 45 percent in a similar survey two years before. Of those, 14 percent reported having had a drink within the last month (down from 16 percent), suggesting that regular use is much less prevalent.

A North Philadelphia charter high school is set to add a 635-pupil middle school to its burgeoning population by next year, thanks to a $2 million grant from the Philadelphia School Partnership. Esperanza Academy, founded in 2000, already serves 750 students in North Philadelphia's Hunting Park neighborhood. About 17 percent of the majority-Hispanic student body speaks English as a second language, and while anyone in the city can apply to attend Esperanza, the school largely serves lower-income students in and around Hunting Park.