Belmont High School in Dayton Public Schools has more than 1,000 students, currently serving grades seven through 12. About 220 students are seventh and eighth grade students, Lawrence said. Those students would largely be unaffected.
The proposal for Belmont High School starts with not accepting new seventh grade students next school year followed by not accepting seventh or eighth grade students in the 2026-27 school year, according to a recent presentation by the district.
Of the current middle school students at Belmont, 140 of those students are in the eighth grade and will be moving up to the ninth grade, Lawrence said. The current seventh grade students there this year will be able to stay at Belmont next year, continuing their eighth grade there.
The change would mostly impact about 124 current sixth grade students who would have to go to a different middle school before they can come to Belmont when they enter ninth grade. There would be some exceptions made for band students, according to the district.
“We’re not doing this to displace people,” Lawrence said.
Those sixth grade students would likely go to Wright Brothers Middle School, which is located at 1361 Huffman Ave. in Dayton and is less than 2 miles from Belmont High School, 2615 Wayne Ave. in Dayton.
“I don’t think not being here is a loss. ... You win at Wright Brothers, and you win here,” Lawrence told community members.
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.
As the district transitions away from having middle school students at Belmont, it would also add new programming there, Lawrence said. The district would launch a Freshman Academy and implement new programming centered around different types of career paths, such as health care, business, engineering, skilled trades, information technology and more. The exact programs are still under consideration.
Feedback from the community was mixed, though a couple students speaking during a recent town hall at Belmont were supportive.
“It sounds great as long as it’s implemented right,” said Bryan Boggs, of Dayton. His daughter Sudie Boggs is a junior at Belmont.
“I think it would be great for students,” Bryan Boggs said. “I had to go to a career center if I wanted to do anything like this. We had no options.”
Sudie Boggs is looking at going into the health care field, such as nursing, after she graduates high school and new career-oriented programming around health care could help her get started, Bryan Boggs said.
“I personally like the idea of it. I would love to have it here,” Sudie Boggs said. “Like he said, I’m wanting to be in the medical field, and I think that would be a wonderful help for me like just to get my foot in the door and see what I can do.”
Belmont teachers appeared more hesitant about the proposal with some pointing out that middle school students had been moved out of the high school in the past before that decision was reversed.
“I would say that my goal is to put structures in place so that, to be honest, once you get a little successful, you can’t go wrong,” Lawrence said. “That we be so successful that you just say, ‘Why would we go back?’”
There were other overcrowding concerns that still need to be addressed, other teachers said. A few teachers don’t have their own classrooms and, instead, travel from whichever room is available with some teaching math lessons in a classroom primarily used for social studies.
Belmont still needs a resource room for its students with the most academic needs, said Neilo Vitali, an intervention specialist at Belmont.
“It’s time that the Belmont High School students stop getting short-changed,” Vitali said.
The decision to transition middle school students out of Belmont is still under consideration of the school board.
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