NEW SCHOOLS, SAME RULES
Flamson Middle School is taking over as the sole district middle school after a historic
vote of 5-2 on Feb. 14, 2023. The new Dual Immersion program will relocate to Daniel E. Lewis Middle School, transferring students that currently attend Georgia Brown Elementary for the start of 2024-2025 school year. This change was approved due to the discovery of a fault line located under the elementary school. Students and staff have stayed at the site for the remainder of the current school year. The vote to shut down the school, built in the 1940s, was held on Jan. 23, 2023 from a recommendation from the District Advisory Committee.
Site changes include, Flamson becoming the feeder school for the other five elementary schools: Kermit King, Bauer Speck, Winifred Pifer, Virginia Peterson, and Pat Butler and Lewis becoming the Duel Immersion School. For the coming school year attendance boundaries will define attendance for the 3,429 K-6 students of PRJUSD. All of the elementary schools will now include grades TK-6. Flamson will change to a 7th and 8th grade junior high school starting August of 2024.
As a sibling to a current Georgia Brown student Elliot Krames, former Georgia Brown student and now PRHS junior welcomed the moving of the Dual Immersion program to Lewis.
“It’s going to take them [ students] a minute to adjust, but I think in the long run, it’s going be a good decision.”
On the issue of attendance redistricting, Krames believes that new district rules will be an opportunity for parents to send their children to a school of their choice.
Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Brad Pawlowski felt the site changes are minimized as students age up at their current sites , “ Georgia Brown becoming a K-8 ,there’s an opportunity for students that are there in fifth grade. Now they’ll stay in sixth grade, and some can stay at seven, some can stay at eight. We think that will also reduce the number of students at Flamson.”. The dual immersion program will start as a K-6 school for the 2024-2025 school year, a K-7 school for 2025-2026, and a K-8 school thereafter.
In this model, sixth grade students will be able to have a transition year where they will be able to still have rotating classes, with one teacher for ELA and history, one teacher for science and math, and one teacher for an elective, but also have the chance to be leaders on their campus.
Assistant Superintendent Erin Haley believes that giving sixth grade students a year to be introduced to the typical six period day will be a benefit to them.
“We have seen a slight dip in performance for some of our 6th graders when transitioning to middle school. This semi-specialized model could be a wonderful transition year to better prepare our students for the six-period rotation they will have in junior high,” Haley said.
Dual immersion changes are also favorable, according to Pawlowski. “The dual immersion program is truly an immersive program. And students that are out of it for a short period of time, it may be hard for them to kind of come back into it. The principal felt that the best way to do that is just to progressively let the fifth and sixth become seventh and so on,” Pawlowski said.
The new site changes happening throughout the district brings to mind the question of what is going to happen to the current Georgia Brown campus. “There’s a lot of things floating out there but no solid answer on it yet,” Powlowski said. The district has fielded complaints about transporting students to new sites. But the changes do not necessitate more driving.
“There are some neighborhood kids, but if you talk with the principal, it’s very limited, that we’re walking to school there. And so it may be an inconvenience now for parents to drive to Lewis as opposed to George Brown. But they were already being transported. So if it’s still going to be a challenge, I totally get it. But I don’t think it’s going to be as significant as maybe some have thought,” Pawlowski said.
Alexandra Thompson, the Class of 2027 counselor, has a 7 year old in second grade at Georgia Brown. Both she and her husband are full time working parents, so the biggest impact of district changes is childcare.
“If I can drop my [child] off right as soon as I can, I can get here on time but after school the elementary school’s day is much shorter than the high school, and my husband doesn’t work in Paso, so childcare becomes our concern,” Thompson said.
Along with site changes comes the reconfiguration of the Lewis the new Dual Immersion school. In reconfiguring Lewis they have to make sure that upper grades like eighth and seventh graders aren’t put next to kindergarteners. Additionally, their is going to be a playground built for kindergarteners as apart of Lewis’ reconfiguration. There are many pros and cons to the changes that will come with the 2024-2025 school year. However, these changes bring opportunities to continue to support and enrich the students of the PRJUSD.
