Salem High School Grade Debate Stirs Passions As Deadline Looms

SALEM, MA — With a deadline looming for the Salem School Committee to decide whether to include seventh- and eighth-grade students at the proposed new high school, there appear to be strong divides within the Committee on which path to pursue and what becomes of the remaining traditional middle school grades in the event of a junior-senior high school.

Superintendent Steve Zrike outlined some of the "pros and cons" of including grades 7-12 in the new building at Tuesday night's School Committee ahead of a proposed discussion and binding vote on the decision set for the Feb. 3 meeting.

While the new high school is still five to seven years away from coming online, designers have set this winter as a deadline necessary for them to determine the building configuration.

Zrike stated the "pros" of the expanded high school as including more efficient use of resources, access to advanced courses, alignment in instruction among the upper grades, more extracurricular options, fewer school transitions for students overall, increased enrollment putting the district in a stronger position not to lose students to private and charter schools and that 40 percent of the district's student body would then be taught in the new, healthier and more modern building.

Among the "cons" he cited based on community and staff feedback are sharing space between students of larger age gaps, worries about younger students "losing their identities" in a larger school, space concerns, integrating the younger students while giving the older and younger students their own space, and concerns about where a 7-12 high school would leave the city's sixth-grade students academically and with social-emotional development.

Unlike the move to send Saltonstall Middle School students to Collins Middle School starting next year proposed this fall, Zrike did not make a recommendation on a preferred path from his office's perspective on Tuesday.

• Salem Saltonstall Middle School Grades To Close: School Committee

But School Committee Mary Manning laid out a lengthy dissent that focused on the danger of leaving the needs of middle school students behind in the desire to make the most of the new building and the state resources available to build it.

"I don't think folks are getting the full scope of what they think they're getting," Manning said. "We are paying these folks to design for us a building that's either a 7-12 or 9-12 (grade configuration). But I believe that there's a lot of misunderstanding among some of the parents and probably some of the staff too because the presentations are unclear."

Manning said careful thought must be given to the needs of the middle school students and how those might be met in a new grade configuration before a decision is made to move forward with it — as opposed to what she sees as making a decision on the configuration first and then figuring out how to make it work as the school is designed and built.

"Now a lot of what probably should be talking about is not going to be," she said. "It doesn't make sense to me. There have been references to having one principal down the line. I know that's down the line and that's just a possibility. But people put possibilities in people's heads and pretty soon they come to fruition.

"I am not sure why we are discussing the issue of middle school separately. It doesn't make sense to me. It makes sense that we should talk about the whole thing and what both levels need. It's not a tag team where you add the middle school on after the fact.

"I have a lot of reasons why I think it shouldn't happen. But I also have a lot of concerns that it's going to happen without due diligence on the middle school part of this. ... My biggest problem is that I don't understand why we're doing this."

Salem Mayor and School Committee Chair Dominick Pangallo signaled, however, that he sees the merit in a 7-12 school and would be inclined to support it at the next School Committee meeting, while reiterating that a binding decision on the grade configuration is time-sensitive.

"Even pushing this to a February meeting is shortening the time that the design team has to work with the (state School Building Authority)," Pangallo said. "I wouldn't want to push it even further into February. My intention is to keep this on the agenda for Feb. 3.

"I am coming down in a place where I think a grade 7-through-12 building does make sense. I share the concerns around the sixth grade and what the future plan for the sixth grade is but this is not a decision that we make and tomorrow the building is done. We have literally several years to develop our thinking around what the future model is going to be."

Manning noted that one of the primary public sentiments coming out of the parent forums is that students in seventh and eighth grade should maintain a strong level of separation from the high school grades if joined in a new building but questioned, if that is the case, why put them together in the first place?

"You won't have a middle school," she said. "You will have an add-on to the high school. I know this. I know it doesn't work well in a lot of areas. I've talked with plenty of folks formally and informally who are in schools that were changed into high schools that were made a 7-12. And if there is no reason to do it, they would never have done it. And they don't like it.

"I don't have anyone telling me what really is a good reason to do this and I have a lot of reasons why we shouldn't do it."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)