Nibley Park Elementary in Salt Lake City School District is on its way to becoming Utah's first kindergarten-though-eighth-grade elementary in the traditional public school system.
This year the elementary school has a seventh grade and next year will offer an eighth grade. And while some are calling the the new grade configuration an experiment, school leaders say it's not an uncommon set-up outside Utah.
"We're not reinventing the wheel or anything — schools in other states, private schools and charters have been doing this for a number of years," said Doug McLennan, principal of Nibley Park. "I don't see K-8 as an experiment — it's an established method that's another choice and another different approach."
This year the school's seventh-grade class is made up of some 30 students. McLennan said since enrollment has declined slightly over the past few years, he had a few discretionary classrooms to work with while another wing is being built for seventh- and eighth-graders.
That $3.64 million addition should be finished between December and February and will have a music room, science lab, six classrooms and a three-quarter gym.
McLennan said the new grade configuration at the school is also referred to as the "ele-middle" model, following more of an elementary style approach with a single master teacher. The students break out and go to elective classes like art, music and physical education and eventually a foreign language, but it's not designed as a seven-period day.
"You are assigned a teacher, they know you, they know everything about you, they know your parents and they make sure you get through," he said.
Though he said the school won't be able to offer students the kinds of classes, programs and electives that a regular middle school can, the trade-off is it removes what is sometimes a difficult transition for kids at that age.
"They are staying in community — teachers know them, they know their friends, so really the idea is that mentoring and just staying attached to those kids will create a little less chance that they are going to fall through the cracks," McLennan said.
Last fall, 11 schools and communities that feed into Hillside and Clayton middle schools conducted a district-spurred investigation into the K-8 concept.
Both the Clayton and Hillside facilities will be rebuilt within a few years, and district leaders said it was an opportune time to look at different ways to serve students.
Jason Olsen, Salt Lake School District spokesman, said it is the district's goal to expand educational choices to families in Salt Lake City. Offering K-8 as an alternative would be another option for families in the district.
Leaders say national statistics show middle-schoolers perform better in a more nurturing environment surrounded by teachers who know them — and their individual achievement levels — well.
The project began as an exploration to gauge interest in K-8. School teams held community meetings to solicit feedback and see if any schools were open to alternative models.
But at most schools, the idea was not welcomed with open arms. Some parents met the proposal with passionate opposition, saying it was a bad idea to have such a broad range of ages under the same roof and that K-8 students won't have the programs available to them that a middle school could offer.
When the dust cleared, two schools, Nibley Park and Whittier Elementary, opted to take on the new configuration. Olsen said Whittier will come on board most likely next fall.
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