Battle Ground Public Schools is discontinuing its alternative middle school at the end of the 2016-2017 school year.
Summit View Middle School currently serves 26 seventh- and eighth-grade students. Next school year, the school’s only students will be the 13 eighth-graders who are currently Summit View seventh-graders. The school will have one full-time teacher instead of two.
“There’s been a transition in the district since the creation of the program,” said Assistant Superintendent Mark Ross. “We’ve added more resources and personnel resources.”
Ross said the district now has full-time psychologists and full-time counselors at each of its comprehensive middle schools. In addition, through a grant, the district will add intervention prevention specialists at each middle school and on-site mental health services at all of the district’s middle schools. Those intervention supports were not in place when the school first opened.
“Now we can support students at their home schools and not bus them out of their neighborhood,” Ross said.
District administrators said the program was at a crossroads and they needed to make a decision. Should they add additional resources, restructure the program, expand grade levels and add staff and more space to serve more students? The second option was to serve the at-risk students at their home schools.
“We felt it would be more advantageous as a district and a wiser use of district resources and better for the students to serve them at their home schools where they’re with their peers in their own neighborhood,” Ross said.
The district’s board of directors made the decision after they discussed the program with administrators, principals and school staff at a Dec. 14 board work session and at the Jan. 11 board meeting.
The alternative middle school for at-risk students opened in fall 2012 in portable classrooms on the campus of Chief Umtuch Middle School, 700 N.E. Ninth St. in Battle Ground. It has two full-time classroom teachers and some part-time staff.
As Summit View Middle School completes its final year in 2016-2017, it will continue to use two classrooms at Chief Umtuch Middle School, and busing will continue to be provided for students. After the school closes, the staff will be transferred to other district schools.
