INDIANAPOLIS (CHALKBEAT INDIANA) — Northwest Middle School Principal Nichole Morrow-Weaver stood at the end of a hallway leading to performing arts classrooms that sat vacant until recently. “It’s really hard for me to even articulate how amazing it’s been this year,” she said on a recent morning in November, as notes from a seventh grade band class drifted down the corridor. The school was once one of the few remaining standalone schools for middle grades within Indianapolis Public Schools — but this year, it’s part of a cohort of new and expanded middle schools. The district’s massive Rebuilding Stronger plan added sixth grade to Northwest’s existing seventh and eighth grades, boosting its enrollment and thus giving the school resources to offer new classes like orchestra and band. Nine miles away at Broad Ripple Middle School on the district’s north side, parents like Erin Hock started the school year cautiously optimistic. For Hock, the restructuring meant her two children left their esteemed Center for Inquiry magnet school earlier than she expected, as the schools’ middle grades were eliminated. But the start of the school year at Broad Ripple was rockier than she expected. Frequent fights, a broken phone system, and understaffing reached a tipping point. Many former CFI parents like Hock pulled their children from Broad Ripple and enrolled them in the neighboring Washington Township schools. “Five years from now it might be great,” she said of the middle school experience. “But they don’t have it figured out yet.” The two contrasting experiences highlight the promise and peril of the district’s Rebuilding Stronger plan, a broad attempt to bring stronger enrichment and academic programs to more students while also grappling with the loss of students to charter and private schools. By closing under-enrolled schools and reconfiguring others, the district is bringing classes like music and Algebra I to the middle school level. Four months into the school year, IPS has trained over 450 teachers in the Montessori, International Baccalaureate, and STEM academic models that middle schools adopted this year, according to officials. It’s not clear, however, whether the new middle school model has slowed, reversed, or exacerbated the long-term decline in the district’s enrollment in its traditional schools, which exist in a hyper-competitive school choice environment. The district did not respond to a request for data on enrollment changes at all seven standalone middle schools since the start of the school year by deadline. “Obviously this was a huge undertaking — a lot of change for a lot of people,” Melody Coryell, the district’s executive director of postsecondary readiness, said of the middle school rollout. “I think we just have to continue to keep communication lines open and do what we need to do to make sure we’re serving each and every student in IPS to the best of our ability.” A rocky start, then a better school experience The district marketed itself to families last year as it prepared to move students from K-8 schools into standalone middle schools. The state has not yet released official enrollment figures for the 2024-25 school year, which would show student retention levels at the middle school level districtwide. Students’ experiences in the revamped middle schools have varied throughout the district. On the south side, seventh grader Melanie Ibarra chose her new school, William Penn Middle School, in a way many middle schoolers might: She picked it based on where her friends were going. It was hard for her to leave James Garfield School 31, which previously served grades K-8 in the district’s southeast area but now only serves up to 5th grade. Now, though, her classes are more diverse than her sixth grade year. She didn’t get enrolled in the heritage Spanish class she signed up for, so instead she’s learning violin in orchestra class. She also takes choir as an elective. These are classes that Rebuilding Stronger brought to schools like William Penn through consolidating resources and students. “She likes it,” Melanie’s mother, Francia Ibarra, said of the school year so far. “She doesn’t want to miss school.” At the newly reopened T.C. Howe Middle School, the year had a “really bumpy start,” said Hillary Brown, vice-president of the school’s parent-teacher association. The large size of the building wasn’t taken into account by Rebuilding Stronger, she said. “To kind of manage that and to keep an eye on that I think was a really difficult transition,” she said. “There was a lot of fights.” But since then, she said, the school has gotten more help with staffing and the year has gotten “significantly better.” Now, her son is enjoying a language class at Howe that he didn’t have in fifth grade at the George Julian School 57, which used to be a K-8 school, she said. He’s also in a variety of after-school clubs, something School 57 could not provide because of its small nature, she said. “He’s a busy guy, and he loves it,” she said. Hope for school year remains despite Broad Ripple exodus Sumitra Ghate knew middle school wasn’t going to be easy. But the culmination of disorganization at the school’s open house, behavioral issues her children witnessed at school,and a lack of communication from administration led her to join an exodus of former CFI families who left Broad Ripple for Washington Township. IPS lost 132 students there from the end of August to early October, WFYI reported. “I can take a lot, and there’s going to be rough edges, and my kids were fine. They never feared for their safety,” Ghate said. “But once I lost confidence in the leadership — I don’t know if it’s not going to get worse. And I don’t know if it’s going to get better.” The district tapped Jeremy Baugh, former principal at Brookside School 54, to lead the school when the former principal went on leave at the end of September, WFYI reported. Since then, families and staff have reported major improvement. The school has reported a significant reduction in the number of behavioral incidents. Noah Nyirendah, a seventh grader at Broad Ripple, told the IPS school board at a meeting last month that the experience is “amazing” and that he has learned how to speak Mandarin and how to play tennis, while also getting high school credits via algebra. “The transition to Broad Ripple was very challenging with a large building and a lot of kids, but after a few months, it’s gotten better and less challenging,” Nyirendah told the board. Morrow-Weaver, the Northwest principal, has high hopes for its new configuration as a school for grades 6-8. “We have so much excitement about being able to have students for three years, and the impact that will have in terms of academic outcomes,” she said. A key academic shift is that the school is “baby-stepping” its way into International Baccalaureate (commonly known as IB), a model that values interdisciplinary learning, she said. That process includes staff training. Next, she said, the school will embark on explaining the IB model’s different grading structure. Morrow-Weaver also treasures the electives her students now have as a bigger school. “Now we’re being able to offer multiple years worth of offerings,” she said of classes like band. “And that’s only going to have a positive impact on their school experience.” This story was originally published by Chalkbeat Indiana on Dec. 3, 2024.