2024-25 Transition
2024-25 Transition - Lake Highlands Learning Community
Overview
As part of RISD’s strategic planning process in 2017-18, a recommendation was made to study the possibility of transitioning to a middle school model, serving grades six, seven and eight at one campus, moving away from the PreK through sixth grade elementary schools and 7-8 junior high model. In 2019-20, a grade configuration committee convened to study the possible change and recommended that the district move forward with implementing a middle school model. The RISD board of trustees adopted a resolution in 2021.
In May 2021, RISD voters approved a $750 million bond package that in part funded the first phase of the middle school transition in the Lake Highlands learning community. The projects are on schedule, and current fifth-graders in Lake Highlands will begin attending Forest Meadow and Lake Highlands middle schools as sixth-graders starting in August 2024. RISD expects to place middle school transition projects at the district’s other six junior highs before voters as part of future bond election.
Some of the best practices and data studied during the decision-making process to transition to a middle school model include:
- Physical, emotional and academic appropriateness of sixth-graders on campus school with seventh and eighth-grade students
- The state curriculum – Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS – are designed and bundled for students in kindergarten through fifth grade and separately for students in sixth through eighth grade
- Over 95% of the more than 1,200 school districts in Texas use the sixth, seventh and eighth grade middle school model
- Increased academic opportunities and choices for 6th graders
- Increased extracurricular opportunities and a greater sense of culture and community fostered through stronger peer groups
- Alignment with RISD’s Strategic Plan and North Star Goal focused on academic growth