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113 C H A P T E R 4 Mountainview Middle School Rural, Regional, and Economically Diverse Mountainview Regional School District (MRSD) was established in 1964 with the opening of a four-year high school located in Lakeview. Sixty-five miles from one end to the other, the school district serves six rural communities, each with a year-round population of between 500 and 5,000 residents. A regional junior high school (grades seven and eight) was established in the mid-sixties to alleviate overcrowding in the elementary schools located in each town. It was located on a second floor wing of the high school. Today, the sixty-acre campus contains the high school, middle school, vocational center, and a 4–6 elementary school. Every year at the annual school district meeting, organized groups of parents request improvements to areas thought to be inadequate, such as the music and arts program, guidance and counseling services, and the aging high school building. Throughout this school district’s thirty-five year history, building projects, and salary increases for teachers and administrators have been contested and sometimes defeated by voters who currently pay some of the highest property tax rates in the United States. A few days after the 1999 school district meeting, the front page of the local newspaper reported that the school budget had been “torpedoed” by citizens who voted down everything proposed except for raises to the grossly underpaid bus drivers. The 2000–2001 school district budget was over $24.5 million, requiring more than 60% of every tax dollar. Mountainview Regional School District spends more per pupil than the state average. In the five-year period from 1993 to 1998, MRSD spent an average of $6,200 per student, equivalent to other school districts in the immediate area. In the same time period, the state average for per pupil spending was $5,400.1 Free and reduced lunch numbers in schoolyear 1999–2000 varied from school to school (18.6% in Lakeview and 49.7% in Hillside), but overall, 29.4% of the students of this school district received free or reduced lunch compared to 72.25% in the nearest metropolitan area during the same school year. 2 Several local teachers I spoke with speculated that a fair number of eligible families do not enroll their children in this program because they do not wish to be the beneficiaries of a government-sponsored program. The school buildings in this district are considered safe places; no metal detectors or police officers greet students at the door and when there is a search for drugs or weapons in student lockers, the news is rare enough to warrant a front page story in the weekly paper. Teachers often leave their doors open, suggesting that what goes on in their classrooms can comfortably be heard by administrators, colleagues, and visitors. With funding that is a little better than average compared to other districts in the state, this school district offers students good facilities and educational opportunities and, many people would say, a better than average education. More Than Basic, Less Than Elaborate For nearly twenty years, seventh and eighth graders went to school in a second floor wing of the high school. In her 1983 report, the principal wrote: “This junior high has proven itself time and again to be a showpiece of good education for children. It deserves a basic home of its own. Not fancy, not elaborate, just basic, flexible space.” A building bond was approved and, in 1984, a separate junior high school building was completed and the wish for basic, flexible space was met. The building committee, comprised of parents, teachers, administrators, and school board members, spent two years in design, contract, and public relations efforts. The end result was a good, practical building that, despite some frayed carpeting and ruined ceiling tiles, still looks new to this day. From its inception, the middle grades teaching staff, with strong administrative leadership, embraced a middle school philosophy and implemented team teaching, flexible scheduling, heterogeneous grouping, and interdisciplinary units. In 1991, the school board officially changed the name from junior high school to middle school. Mountainview Middle School is a two-story redbrick building behind the high school and connected to it by an indoor walkway. Large windows in almost every classroom reduce the need for electric lights, provide teachers an ideal location for hanging plants, and allow students to be connected to the outside world all day long. On one...

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