SCHOOLS TO STUDY MIDDLE LEVEL SYSTEM

Cape Girardeau's Board of Education meets tonight to look at ways to proceed with development of a middle level educational system, with or without a new building.

The 6 p.m. study session will include discussion of how to change the district's grade structure with existing buildings to make that possible, said school board President John Campbell.

The meeting at the board office is public, but Campbell said, "I don't think there will be an open forum."

He said the study session is just the beginning of a review of options for the district.

"We're not going to be in any big hurry this time," Campbell said. "Now that the $900,000 is gone, the urgency is gone."

Superintendent Neyland Clark said, "We were notified on Oct. 15 by (Missouri Director of School Finance) Vic Slaughter that as of Jan. 1, 1994, no schools will be eligible for the trigger mechanism in the formula."

Had the district increased taxes in October for a lease-purchase construction project, the increased local levy would have triggered an additional $900,000 annually in state money through the state's new school funding and reform law.

Despite two election defeats, Campbell said the district will likely come back to voters again.

"The next ballot issue would probably be sometime between February and June. Depending on if it passes, the earliest we could be in a new building would be the fall of 1996. We've got lots of crowded kids and we need something in the meantime."

The board president believes a middle school is still the top priority for the district. "We hope to get something moving," he said.

"We've got some overcrowdedness in schools. We've also got some ethnic imbalances, in one school especially. And part of the presentation will be about that.

"We need to equalize enrollments at some of the other schools before someone tries to do it for us, like a federal judge."

Specifically, he is referring to May Greene Elementary School. Currently 210 students attend May Greene elementary school; 64 percent are minority students.

Clark said the plan does not include redrawing elementary school boundaries, or redistricting.

Instead, the board will look at different ways of grouping grade levels, or reconfiguring.

Following the Oct. 5 election, district administrators were encouraged to communicate their ideas to either Jim Englehart, director of secondary education, or Richard Bollwerk, director of elementary education. On Oct. 12, members of the central office administration met in St. Louis to look at the proposals. The administrators attended a scheduled training workshop the following day.

District personnel came up with at least four different grade configurations.

1. Kindergarten through fifth-grade elementary schools, a sixth-grade center, the seventh-grade center, an eighth- and ninth-grade junior high and a 10-12 grade high school.

2. Kindergarten through fifth grade elementary schools, two middle schools with grades six through eight, and a high school with grades 9-12.

3. Attendance centers grouping kindergarten and first grade, second and third grades, fourth and fifth grades, sixth through eighth grades and 9-12 grade.

4. Kindergarten through fifth grades at elementary schools, a sixth through eighth grade middle school and a 9-12 high school.

The fourth scenario, which would have been made possible with construction of a new middle school building, is the long-range goal, Clark said. But without that building, the district does not have facilities to accommodate the move.

At the study session, the board is slated to look at pros and cons of the options, and perhaps additional scenarios, to see which may be best.

"The board has expressed a desire to begin to move the district to some intermediate step to the middle school," Clark said.

The first option, which includes creation of a sixth-grade center, has received the most discussion among district staff, Clark said.

A possible location for the sixth-grade center is the May Greene building.

Under this scenario, sixth graders from across the district would attend classes at May Greene, just as all seventh graders now attend L.J. Schultz.

Kindergarten through fifth-grade students who would have attended May Greene elementary school would have their choice of attending any other elementary school in the district, as long as the school has space available.