As part of a three year process of change the Farmingdale School District is undergoing, including a full day kindergarten program to begin this September, students who are currently in fourth grade will be moving up to Howitt Middle School when they are sixth graders in September 2002.

At a regular meeting of the board of education held last Wednesday, Feb. 7, at the Howitt Middle School auditorium, Arleen Besner, principal of Howitt and member of the planning committee for sixth graders moving up to the middle school, explained that once the sixth grade moves up to Howitt the student body will total approximately 1,600 children. To accommodate them, Besner stated that the construction of a new wing would be necessary in the Howitt Middle School East building.

The new wing, as shown in the proposed floor plan, will be a two floor addition to the school with 24 additional classrooms to accommodate the larger student body. There will also be a new library/media center constructed as well as a new band room and four rotation rooms for music students to practice in.

In addition, she explained that for the first time in the Farmingdale school district, sixth graders will have three team teachers for five periods of the school day. Their first period teacher will be their homeroom teacher, who students will also have for English Language Arts and either math, science or social studies. After their first and second period English and reading classes, students will change classrooms to be with one of the team teachers for social studies third period, math fourth, and science fifth.

After students complete the first five periods of their school day, the rest of their schedule is currently tentative. Besner explained that more than likely students will next proceed to have lunch. She further added that to accommodate the large student body which will be entering Howitt in 2002, an extra fourth-period lunch time will be added to the school day schedule.

Since the school already has two cafeterias, Besner said that there is no need to construct an additional one. Rather, fourth period will be added to the school day as a lunch period. If grade levels mix during lunch periods, either sixth and seventh graders or seventh and eighth graders will integrate during lunch. Otherwise, only one grade level will have lunch during a given lunch period. Besner added that sixth and eighth grade students would not be mixed during lunch time.

"The next period we're looking to have is a foreign language class," Besner explained at the meeting. Sixth graders will participate in a language class, taking 10 weeks of Spanish, French, Italian and German. Upon entering 7th grade, they will be asked to select one of the languages to take for a full school year.

In addition, students will have a physical education period opposite an elective, such as performing arts, computer lab time, or study skills. Students will also participate in a half-year general music program opposite an art class. Other class suggestions and possibilities include health, technology or home economics.

At the meeting, Besner pointed out some of the benefits of moving the sixth-grade class to Howitt. They included having the three teacher team, where the teachers would share a body of 75 students and one common prep period. With this, students would not need to be pulled out of their regular classrooms with their homeroom teachers for remedial reading and math labs as they would be integrated into the school day.

Unlike students in Farmingdale's four elementary schools, who come in before school hours for morning music practice, sixth graders at Howitt will not participate in a.m. performing music times. Music classes will instead also be integrated into the school day. In addition, a separate band will be formed consisting of only sixth grade students.

Besner added that another benefit of having sixth graders at Howitt is that GATE becomes a team approach through the CORE curriculum integrated into the school day for horizons students. In addition, the ESL (English as a second language) program will be integrated into the school day as well.

Besner went on to explain that students will be provided with a home base seminar/advisory with their homeroom teacher, which will give students the opportunity to speak with their teacher about anything they may wish to discuss. This will in turn allow teachers to get to know their students on a more individual and personal basis.

In addition, teachers will now have three years to integrate a curriculum rather than the current two years.

Students in sixth grade at Howitt will be permitted to join any after school clubs, programs or after school activities that are available to other middle school students. They will not be able to take part in interscholastic sports, but can participate in intramurals.

At the meeting, Assistant Superintendent Barbara Horsley spoke of three possible options in transporting the new sixth grade class to Howitt. Currently, sixth graders who live at a one-half mile distance from the school are given bus privileges, while seventh and eighth graders are transported by bus if they live one mile or more away from the school. Horsley explained that this is one of the possibilities to consider for next September, but that there may be some complications as a result of such a plan. For example, if two siblings attending Howitt live in the same household, this situation could cause problems if one student is taken to school by bus while another one isn't.

Another alternative to transporting students to the middle school would be to increase the distance for sixth graders to one mile so that it matches that of the seventh and eighth graders. Horsley pointed out that this would be the least expensive of the three possible options.

The last option would be to decrease the transportation distance for seventh and eighth graders to one-half mile so it matches the distance of the sixth graders. Horsley added that this could be enforced next year, one year before the sixth graders move to Howitt, by adding the request for additional transportation funds in the budget to be voted on this spring. Otherwise, if this option is chosen, it could be added to the budget to be voted on in spring 2002.

Horsley explained that reducing the mileage for seventh and eighth grade students in the 2001-2002 school year would require the addition of three large buses at a cost of approximately $120,000. This would bring the district to a total of 65 large buses and 13 vans.

Since the program is not scheduled to be implemented until 2002, more details on the sixth graders moving up to Howitt will be discussed at future board meetings.