Conejo Valley to Convert Los Cerritos to Middle School

Starting in the fall, Los Cerritos Intermediate School will expand its central Thousand Oaks campus to include 144 sixth-graders and become the second middle school in the Conejo Valley.

School trustees unanimously approved the expansion Thursday night, saying the new configuration of grades six, seven and eight at Los Cerritos will ease crowding at elementary campuses and give parents a choice of school settings.

“I like the middle school concept,” school trustee Richard Newman said. “It’s a more enriched education, and that’s what we should be giving.”

“We’re very excited, “ Los Cerritos Principal Jo-Ann Yoos said. “We’ve wanted to be a middle school since last year.”

Yoos said the plan has received tremendous support from parents. “The families are really behind us.”

Los Cerritos administrators plan to mimic a highly successful pilot program at Colina Middle School, where sixth-grade students rotate into classes taught by three or four teachers, instead of the one-teacher classroom common in elementary schools.

Colina was the first school in Thousand Oaks to launch a middle school program, allowing 144 sixth-grade students to attend school with seventh- and eighth-graders for the first time this school year.

“We’ve been successful so far with the current program,” Supt. Jerry C. Gross said. A second middle school is desirable because “the parents want it and we need the space.”

As in Colina’s program, sixth-graders at Los Cerritos will be able to take elective courses, such as band, chorus and drama. And to ease them into the middle school environment, classrooms will be clustered with a separate locker area.

Enrollment at Los Cerritos will be optional: Parents will be able to choose between sending their sixth-grade child to the new middle school or keeping their son or daughter in elementary school, officials said. If more than 144 students apply for the middle school program, the school district will hold a lottery.

The expansion of Los Cerritos should be easy and inexpensive, officials said. The district was considering building additional classrooms at some elementary schools because of crowding, but that won’t be necessary now.

“You save the potential of having to build portables or bus kids to another school site,” Gross said.

Nowhere will Los Cerritos’ expansion be more welcome than at Ladera School, where enrollment peaked at more that 650 students this year, administrators said.

“Heaven knows we need the space,” Ladera Principal Kristine White said. Ladera is the largest elementary school in Thousand Oaks.

In recent weeks, many parents, concerned about where the best place for their children may be, have asked White about the merits of middle school, she said.

“Is it educationally sound? Yes,” White said. “I do believe sixth grade in middle school is good for children.”

*

Educators say the middle school configuration enhances learning because students in sixth through eighth grades have more in common developmentally, physically and intellectually.

Children say it just sounds like fun.

“I would want to go so I wouldn’t have to go to elementary school anymore,” said 10-year-old Ileana Udell, a fifth-grade student at Ladera who doesn’t like sharing a campus with smaller students. “They’re just . . . younger.”

Fifth-grader Joy Vergilis said his parents are “70% sure” that they will send him to Los Cerritos next year, not Ladera.

“I want to go really bad because all my friends are going,” he said. “It kind of makes you feel bigger.”

Sixth-grade student Jennifer Joseph said the district should have made the change to middle school earlier, so she could have attended Los Cerritos this school year.

“I would have liked going with the older kids,” she said. “That would have been lots of fun.”

Los Cerritos administrators had wanted their campus to become a pilot middle school this year, but district officials decided to wait and test the new configuration at only one school.

But Ladera parent Barbara Guffin said she will not send her twin fifth-grade daughters to Los Cerritos next year. Sixth-graders are simply too young to share a campus with junior high school-age students, she said.

“I just think they need a year to mature before they are ready to be in that environment,” Guffin said. “I’ve decided my kids are not going.”