Open letter to parents of Adrian R-III students

August 26, 2011

MS Blackhawk Parents:

New schedules will be issued to all students in grades 6-8 Monday morning August 29^th. In the sixth and seventh grades all classes will be co-educational in the mornings and gender specific classes will be used during non-core specials and afternoon skills classes. Eighth grade students will have co-educational Science and Social Studies classes. They will remain in gender specific Math and Communication Arts classes in the morning along with their current non-core and afternoon skills classes.

As required by Title IX all requests regarding gender specific classes must be honored. I have a limited number of staff members at each grade level so choices had to be made involving the schedule and honoring the few requests. Scheduling continues to be a challenge in the middle school. However, I strongly believe that this is a necessary evil if we are going to continue to offer your students double Math, double Communication Arts, skill specific afternoon classes, Pre-Algebra to seventh and eighth graders, along with Algebra I and English I for high school credit to eighth grade students. All of these things are outstanding educational opportunities for your children that were not available three years ago. All of these course offerings combined with a dedicated staff continue to increase student achievement in the Adrian R-III Middle School.

I would like to thank the numerous people that called to express support for the gender specific classes. I would also like to thank those parents in the sixth and seventh grade that allowed the schedule to remain intact for the non-core and skill classes. Another thank you to the eighth grade parents for allowing gender specific classes to continue within that grade level. The change in the eighth grade was to balance class size numbers in Science and Social Studies.

I apologize once again for the lack of pre-information regarding the gender specific classes. I am grateful and excited that they will continue in various ways at each grade level. If you should have any questions please feel free to call me at school on Monday.

Sincerely,

Christopher E. Shanks

MS/HS P

Dr. Carrie Eidson

Director of Curriculum and Instruction