No decision was made, and the board asked for several more points of information before proceeding to any vote.
The Belmont students would be sent to other district middle schools while the extra space would be used for additional Belmont High School options. The discussion was a response to overcrowding, board members said.
The Montessori discussion was an attempt to keep students in the district for longer. Board members have said before that students who go to River’s Edge Montessori, which is in the McPherson neighborhood near downtown, and to Horace Mann Elementary in southeast Dayton are the students who most commonly will leave the district if they don’t get into the Stiver’s School for the Arts, which has a seventh and eighth grade and is ranked among the highest performing schools in DPS.
Board member Will Smith noted that there are more high schools than middle schools. The district has three standalone middle schools, plus students attending seventh and eighth grades at Belmont and Stivers. In 2023, the district added seventh and eighth grades to Charity Adams Earley Academy, an all-girls school in northwest Dayton. DPS has six high schools and Mound Street Academy, a dropout prevention program.
Some board members called for a vision of what the district could look like in the future rather than just responding to what’s happening.
“I oftentimes wish we had a longer time to pause and really vision what a productive junior high campus within Dayton Public Schools should look like or what a productive junior high campus in today’s world looks like,” said board member Karen Wick.
Board member Jocelyn Rhynard said she wanted to hear from the community before making any decision.
“I am curious about the thoughts of the community and the city of Belmont, how they feel about this,” she said. “I think that should be part of the discussion.”
District superintendent David Lawrence has made improving middle schools one of the top priorities for his staff. Some of the changes already made include adding more clubs and activities.
Board member Will Smith asked where previous proposals for new schools had gone, such as a new West side arts elementary school and an alternative school that was proposed but did not open this school year.
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