By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post

ELLIS — Beginning next fall, junior high students in Ellis USD 388 will be attending the high school.

Superintendent Bob Young said the USD 388 Board of Education voted 7-0 Monday night to move seventh- and eighth-grade classes from Washington Grade School to Ellis High School.

Young said the move has been a topic of discussion for the past few years, primarily because of space issues.

“We’re one of the lucky few school districts in northwest Kansas that has had an increasing enrollment and, as a result, we’ve got a full building at our grade school and no room for future growth,” he said.

Young said if the district’s growth trends continue, officials are going to have to split a grade in half, and space is lacking to accommodate such a move.

For the last seven years, seventh- and eighth-grade students have already been bused to the high school for a number of classes that include health and physical education, music and vocation classes.

According to Young, there are some students who are on the bus four to five times a day to go the high school.

“It’s not efficient for those students to be losing 30 to 40 minutes worth of classroom time every week, simply because we have to transport,” he said.

While some of the concerns surround having the junior high students mingling with high school students, the junior and senior high students are expected to have little interaction with each other.

District staff and administration is in the early stages of creating plans to best implement the change.

The district will continue to discuss possible changes to courses and how best to schedule them for the different class.

“We’ve changed the conversation from a ‘What if this happens?’ conversation to now ‘How can we make it work the best we possibility can?’ ” said Young.