K-8 schools are gaining popularity across Tampa Bay. Are they worth it?

Tampa Bay school districts are in a K-8 school resurgence. Common through the 1940s, with a mini-boom in the early 2000s, the idea of letting children attend the same school from kindergarten through eighth grade is gaining renewed popularity among families. The Pinellas County school district, for example, had a waiting list this spring of nearly 2,000 children for spaces in its two K-8 magnet schools. It plans to merge two neighboring mid-county elementary schools into a K-8 campus next year. Parents in communities across Hillsborough County, such as Carrollwood and Apollo Beach, have petitioned their school board to convert local elementary schools into K-8 campuses so their children could avoid what some see as unsafe, unsuccessful middle schools.

In August, the district opened its 14th combined elementary-middle school. The Pasco County school district, which had no K-8 schools a decade ago, has made the model a go-to choice, too. It’s built two in recent years — with a third under construction and another being planned as a consolidation of three New Port Richey schools where enrollment has declined. The Pasco school board on Tuesday approved that merger to take place next August. Support for the concept is not universal, though.

While some parents say they like the idea of having education and community continuity for their children through the difficult adolescent years, others worry about having four- and five-year-olds share bus rides and hallways with preteens twice their size. While some educators point to the opportunity to keep children’s attention on core areas such as literacy for longer, others note that K-8 schools might offer fewer electives than focused middle schools for older students. “It’s hard to prove that one model is better than the other,” said Michael Petrilli, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and one of the speakers at Harvard’s symposium on emerging school models. “There’s going to be tradeoffs. ” Academic benefits Martin West, academic dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, said his study of Florida students’ state exam results, published in 2013, found that K-8 schools offered positive benefits over the middle school model.

The outcomes showed that students who attended K-8 schools made more progress than their peers who switched schools at sixth grade.