Emphasis: Provide sixth graders with best possible education The Islands' Sounder, January 22, 2003 By Ted Grossman The recent debate about whether Orcas sixth graders should be moved from the elementary to the middle school missed the main point. Local parents and teachers considered the matter largely on social grounds. Unfortunately, there was little discussion about which arrangement will provide local children with the best possible education. Superintendent Barry Acker laid out the more important concern in last week’s Sounder when he said, “We must remove the ‘wall’ between sixth and seventh grade. We need to develop better bridges between the upper elementary grades and the middle school in order to give students the skills they need.” Acker acknowledges that the Orcas school could do a better job educating its students. High School counselor Nancy Wrightsman points out that this is particularly true in the area of writing. “Our students do not write as well as they should; this is an area where we must improve,” she said. Hooray for Acker and Wrightsman for acknowledging this problem area, and for proposing steps to solve it. The Sounder has been aware for many years that even some of the high school’s top honor students do not write well. We know this because we get to read their applications for a Sounder scholarship every spring. And that brings us back to the question of where to place next year’s sixth graders. Probably, the so-called “wall” between sixth and seventh grade could more easily be removed if the younger students were moved into the middle school. But because we’re a small school, it may not matter where the sixth graders are located. Everybody knows everybody in the Orcas schools, and there is no reason why any barriers should exist between the elementary and middle schools. Those barriers will disappear when the local school’s two principals, Barbara Kline and Coleen O'Brien, and the teachers in grades five through eight, roll up their sleeves and provide local children with a rigorous curriculum that flows smoothly from one grade to another. When that happens, the debate about where the sixth graders will be located will become moot. And the Orcas school will be even better than it is now.