Seven Bridges Opening a Success

In 2003, after years of debate, the Chappaqua Central School District opened Seven Bridges Middle School to alleviate local population growth and classroom overcrowding.

While the community agreed it was a worthwhile investment, there was a good deal of controversy concerning how to fairly divide the three elementary schools and funnel the students into the two middle schools. Seven years later,  has the controversy subsided?

With change comes trepidation. The construction of the new middle school, located on Seven Bridges Road in Chappaqua, led to a decision to send all students from Douglas G. Grafflin Elementary School to Robert E. Bell Middle School and students from Westorchard Elementary School to Seven Bridges Middle School. However, the students from Roaring Brook Elementary School were split geographically to attend whichever school they were closer to.

 The Roaring Brook placement decision was controversial. Why did students have to separate from their classmates and attend separate schools? At the time there were questions raised. Would property values of homes located in the Roaring Brook zone decrease because it was potentially "less desirable" to be in the area where students were split? Could the young students acclimate?

"We have found that students in the district maintain relationships, regardless of which middle school they attend," said Dr. David Fleishman, superintendent of Chappaqua Central School District. "With the amount of extracurricular activities our students do—be it clubs or sports—friends continue to see each other outside of school."

Additionally, many of the students attending the same middle school had already met over the years in such clubs and sporting activities, so were hardly strangers.

This opinion was mirrored a student and parent interviewed. "If you are friends with someone, it doesn't matter if you go to the same school or not, you're going to hang out with them," said Justin Roddrick, a junior at Horace Greeley.

Sarah Ellen Berman, the mother of a ninth grader who went to Roaring Brook and then Seven Bridges, said there wasn't a problem. "I did not share the general sentiment that the division of Roaring Brook would have negative consequences. Most of my children's friends continued on with them to Seven Bridges and they reunited with the rest in high school."   

Another area of discussion was the new grade configuration of the district. By adding a second middle school, the district was able to move fifth graders over to the middle schools and create a configuration that ran from fifth to eighth grade. Additionally, the elementary schools added full-day kindergarten, which was formerly half-day.

While some parents thought fifth grade students were too young to be in a middle school setting, Fleishman felt the students were well-supported and saw no detrimental effects from it. "The biggest problem for the fifth graders was that they would need to deal with multiple teachers, something they don't have in elementary school," he noted. The schools went to lengths to provide guidance to the students, easing the transition period as much as possible.

"I've worked in lots of different school districts and grade configuration is not a big ingredient in the schools' success," the superintendent pointed out. Based on his remarks, it appears most of the parents and their children agree.

Whether it's the manner in which the district prepare the students for the transition into middle school, or whether the students are ready to enter the middle school in fifth grade, students in the district appear to be doing well in the middle schools.

"Once the decision was made [concerning the Roaring Brook split and grade configuration], everybody moved on," Fleishman said. "Kids are resilient, and they handled the transition well."