Warren Township delays move of 5th graders into elementary schools

This article was published as part of a partnership between Chalkbeat Indiana, WFYI, and Mirror Indy to increase coverage of township school districts in Marion County.

“Oh no!”

That was Keyiri Ramos’ reaction when she learned that Warren Township had delayed by a year plans to move fifth grade students back to elementary schools.

Warren Township officials say the district’s nine elementary schools would be pushed over capacity without renovations. They postponed the plan to the 2027-28 school year to give the district time to build new elementary school classrooms and prepare for changes to educational programming.

For Ramos, though, it means her fourth grader will advance from Sunny Heights Elementary School to the intermediate-middle school next year. She is among parents who are worried about young kids being exposed to things like bullying and vaping at an earlier age.

Her oldest daughter, who is now 20 and out of school, had struggled with the transition to middle school in a building shared with older sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

“I’m very sad about (the delay),” Ramos said.
 

Other parents are OK with the wait.

Justin Beattey’s oldest daughter had a challenging transition to fifth grade, but he doesn’t want the district to rush into changes just because they’re popular.

“You can plan all you want, but there’s unexpecteds,” Beattey said.
 

4 schools will have construction projects

The school board approved the transition Feb. 4. The plan calls for construction projects at four elementary schools: Lowell, Pleasant Run, Hawthorne and Grassy Creek. Each project would add four classrooms for a total cost of about $21 million.
 

Administrators said the schools were selected based on their building’s designs. Each has long classroom hallways, which more easily allow for the addition of new rooms without disrupting pod-style layouts used in some other Warren Township elementaries.

The district explored other ideas, such as renovating a closed elementary school, but found that construction estimates for reopening a school were higher than adding onto existing schools.

The township plans to pay for the projects through bond financing, meaning the district won’t have to ask homeowners for a tax increase.

“We want to get this right,” Hanson told the school board. “It’s gone beyond our timeline but I think we’re going to be in a better place for that.”
 

Administrators say the plan reflects a first step in smoothing out students’ transition from elementary school to middle school. They say they plan to spend time over the next school year talking to parents about their students’ needs.

They’ll also study whether to change school assignments for some elementary students in the 2027-28 year to ensure enrollment is evenly distributed when fifth graders move back.

District leaders say they’ll explore ways to strengthen specialty programs, such as those for honors students.

“We tend to have stronger parent engagement at our elementaries and this would even strengthen that more,” Hanson said of the plan. “It just protects the culture and the connection that all of us value in Warren.”
 

What do families think?

Some parents wish the district would go even further.

Dominique Drane’s niece is a fifth grader at Creston Intermediate-Middle School. She started the year needing some extra help academically, Drane said. But now that she’s found an advocate in the district, things are getting better.

The aunt wonders if a K-6 model would have helped her niece ease into middle school.

“Fifth grade was always way too young,” she said. “And then sixth grade, I feel like they just need that one more year to say, ‘Hey, this is the transition. We’re getting ready to go to middle school.’”
 

Parents have a few ideas like that of their own. They say they’d like to see strong and varied types of communication from district leaders as their work continues.

Beattey suggested allowing fifth graders to rotate classes when they move back to elementary schools to give them a taste of what different class periods might be like. Ramos encouraged taking the fifth graders on trips to the middle school to shadow other students before moving onto their new school.

She also suggested some near-term solutions to help make fifth graders’ final year at the intermediate-middle schools better. The district could offer more before- and after-school activities, she said, and training for educators on how to keep the younger students separate from their older, eighth grade peers.

“That’s gonna be hard to do but it’s a protection thing,” Ramos said. “I just don’t want my kids to be exposed to anything prematurely.”