TUSD superintendent Gabriel Trujillo recently announced in a meeting that the school board will be turning their non-magnet middle schools into junior highs and putting sixth grade into their elementary schools. He first suggested this idea on April 30th, 2019, but it is just now coming into action. While the school board may think this a good idea, it could hurt current TUSD students and teachers because of funding.

To give a little backstory, the school board thinks this is a good idea because of the 740 TUSD families that decided not to continue with TUSD schools after elementary school. One of the main reasons why they didn’t continue was because some TUSD families shared that their kids had a “very concerning” experience with TUSD middle schools, and most of the schools they listed were non-magnet middle schools.

Trujillo stated, “Sixth grade becomes the vehicle to take an entire year to make sure that these 12-year-old young adults are fully ready for the bridge from a largely self-contained community into one that is more departmentalized.” He truly believes this change will help prepare students and help kids build responsibilities.

This change will impact elementary school students who would have enrolled in a non-magnet middle school and will change the district’s funding tremendously. Trujillo has proposed the idea to make the Wakefield Family Resource Center into one of the new junior highs, which will cost an estimated $2.3 million for renovations, plus an additional estimated $150,000 to move current families out of the center.

This plan will ultimately be an inconvenience for these elementary schools because of overcrowding, food supply, school supplies, and much more. These schools will most definitely need portable classrooms, at least 10 for four to five elementary schools if not more. The school board is thinking that they are eligible to get $3.5 million for these renovations and changes, but yet again, these numbers are estimates, and they don’t even know if they’ll get the money.