School District Considers Adding 7th, 8th Grades To Elementary Schools

A Borderland school district is considering making big changes to some its campuses by adding seventh and eighth grades to elementary schools.

Officials at the Gadsden Independent School District told ABC-7 that nothing is set in concrete.

Here’s the proposal: Over two years, the district would add seventh-graders, then eighth-graders to its elementary campuses.

The middle schools would then become ninth grade, freshman academies.

Gadsden School Superintendent Cynthia Nava told ABC-7 the reconfiguration was actually an idea brought to district officials by parents at Loma Linda Elementary.

Nava added the move would be fiscally neutral for the district.

“It’s the same number of (seventh and eighth grade) students and the same number of teachers,” she said. “It’s just the location that would change.”

Vado resident Ofelia Hernandez lives around the corner from Vado Elementary. A 35-year resident of the area, she said the idea is a bad one.

“The seventh- and eighth-graders are too mature to be with the little ones,” she said. “It’s the age when they make more trouble, seventh and eighth grade.”

But Nava said keeping the older students in a familiar environment could keep them in line and on track during the sometimes turbulent preteen years.

“The (elementary school) principals know every one of those kids and every one of their families,” Nava said. “We think the students would grow in those schools.”

The district is currently in the process of holding informational sessions to get feedback from parents.

Nava said the Gadsden School Board will decide this spring whether to move forward with a pilot program at Loma Linda Elementary.