To The Editor:

Over the years, I have had many conversations with friends about Newtown’s 5th-6th grade intermediate school setup, and I can’t recall a single parent who didn’t agree that Newtown’s current approach is fantastic. I have even heard people say it was a selling point for moving to this town, as it was for my family.

I read in the Bee this week that Superintendent Uberti strongly favors the more common 6th-8th grade setup. She commented that it would reduce the number of transitions as one positive and would also eliminate having a year of students who are new to a school followed by a year in which those same students are at their final year in the building. Well, if we make the intermediate school a 4th-5th grade facility, we aren’t reducing the number of transitions at all; we’re simply pushing those transitions onto younger kids. We would also still have one year of students being new to the school and one year as their last in that building. This proposal merely shifts the intermediate school students down a year to younger children.

The main reason, by far, that parents have praised the current setup has everything to do with age, puberty, and the emotional maturity of the students. The difference between 6th and 8th grade is, in some ways, wider than an ocean. Having raised two kids in our strong school system, I have seen 8th graders who could dunk a basketball, some with mustaches and beards, and even some who weighed over 200 pounds. Yet, the middle-school maturity level is right in the bully zone.

Bullying in middle schools has always been problematic and likely always will be. By having grades 7-8 together as kids’ bodies mature, Newtown’s current configuration makes a lot of sense. Telling us that the benefit of moving to grades 6-8 is that it allows teachers to be closer to peers teaching similar subjects misses the point and, frankly, forgets the golden rule of education: focus on the students. Maybe the BoE needs a biology refresher. This idea is a recipe for trouble that Newtown has wisely mitigated, and it is one of the things that makes our town and school system special.

Bill Moody Sandy Hook