The Cassopolis Board of Education and administration is looking at ways to keep spending under control.

One of the ideas that came from the education committee was the possibility of moving the sixth grade from Sam Adams Elementary over to Ross Beatty Jr./Sr. High School.

The purpose of Monday night’s meeting in the Sam Adams cafeteria was to get input from the public.

The proposed moved would help utilize staff, space and improve curriculum and instruction in the district according to Cassopolis Superintendent Tracy Hertsel.

The proposal was not well received by the nearly 50 people in attendance.

While the consensus was that combining the sixth, seventh and eighth grades for the purpose of curriculum was fine, many thought mixing those students with high school aged students at Ross Beatty was not a good idea.

Erin Westrate, who is a teacher at Ross Beatty as well as a parent of a future sixth-grader, probably summed up the crowd’s feelings with her emotion comments, which included lining up several students to show the difference in sizes between sixth-graders and high school students.

“These kids up here represent next year’s sixth-grade girls and 12th-grade boys,” she said. “And these are not the smallest sixth-grade girls or boys or not the biggest 12th-grade boys or girls. I wanted to provide a visual just so you could see the widely varying maturity levels we will be dealing with if this move is made. It is already pushing it with seventh-graders.

“In eighth grade they are getting closer. I teach high school right now, but I have taught junior high and I know how junior high acts and what they need. They are a totally different breed from high school.”

Westrate went on to say children grow up too fast these days.

“As hard as we try, it is difficult to keep that innocence as long as possible,” she said. “Why are we trying to hurry this process along?”

Many in attendance preferred moving the seventh- and eighth grade to Sam Adams, which according to board members, would be much less cost effective as it would force the district to hire another administrator.

If the sixth grade moves to Ross Beatty, there would be no need to add an administrative position because there would only be approximately 60 to 70 students being added to that building.

Another idea was to move sixth graders to Squires Elementary or Red Brick School.

Board member John Bright told the crowd why those were not very feasible options.

“At Squires right now we run adult ed out of there, we run robotics out of there. We are also developing a home school program that was going to run out of there. We have got uses for that building. We are not there yet, but we are working to do a lot of good things with that building.

“We are not willing to sell off that school (Red Brick) to a charter school so they can take more of our students. Another thing we are not willing to do is sell off the acreage and the science ag barn. We feel they are resources we can still use.”

Hertsel and board members felt it was important to take this idea to the public and to do it in an open forum instead of at a board meeting, where regulations keep them from having an open and free conversation.

Hertsel said that he was pleased with the results and felt that many positives could be taken away from the exchange.

“I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules,” he said. “We had a sub-committee meeting last week and they really wanted to hear what the community had to say.”

No decisions have been made, but the board will need to act prior to the end of June if it decides to move forward with moving the sixth graders.