A fact-finding delegation from Lebanon School District visited fifth- through eighth-grade middle schools in Belmont and Gilford, N.H., yesterday.

Lebanon school officials are considering building a new middle school for grades five to eight as one option to replace Lebanon's junior high.

The group from Lebanon, which included the superintendent, some school board members and Lebanon junior high staff, met with educators in Belmont and Gilford and toured the buildings during the school day.

Belmont Middle School Principal Aaron Pope was asked if the younger schoolchildren mingled often with the older kids. “There's not a whole lot of time and space to get the kids to intermix with each other,” said Belmont Middle School Principal Aaron Pope. “We really control when the fifth- and sixth-graders are with the seventh- and eighth-graders,” said Jim White, a sixth-grade teacher at Belmont.

Fifth grade joined grades six to eight at Belmont Middle School in 1999. Typically 400 to 500 students in all four grades are enrolled there. The building wasn't designed as a five-through-eight middle school, however. Sections of the school were built at different times over roughly 70 years.

Gilford Middle School, which opened in 2002, was designed to serve as a five-through-eight middle school, with capacity for 600 students. This year about 370 children are enrolled, according to Assistant Principal Kara Lamontagne.

She told the Lebanon delegation there isn't much contact between the fifth-graders and older students. She said that, contrary to some parents' worries, fifth-graders usually adapt easily to the structure of middle school.

“The kids do fine. The parents still struggle with the transition,” she said.

Educators at the Gilford and Belmont middle schools were generally in agreement that fifth-graders weren't traumatized by going to school with sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.

“For a long time, I thought the best thing for fifth grade was to be the oldest kids in the elementary school,” said teacher Tim White at Belmont, who formerly taught fifth-graders.

He said he changed his mind after teaching at the fifth- through-eighth-grade school.

Michael Cozort, superintendent of Shaker Regional School District, said that running a successful five-through-eight middle school was a matter of “balance between rigor and nurture.”

Fifth graders are “much needier,” said Julie Cascio, a guidance counselor at the school. “They still want hugs and nurturing.”

Cozort said he has noticed some positive impacts on the older children in the middle school.

“The seventh- and eighth-graders, when you brought the fifth- and sixth-graders in, became younger,” Cozort said. He said he thought it made the older kids feel less pressure to become “worldly.”

Nevertheless, Cozort said he would prefer to have the fifth grade in a separate building.

“I would not bring the fifth grade in, personally,” he said, adding that placing fifth grade in the same building as grades seven through eight was a matter of political necessity. It was, he said, a concession the district had to make in order to win approval from voters to build a new high school.

Bond measures for the new high school failed seven times before narrowly winning a majority. The high school was built in 1998.

Cozort had advice for Lebanon school officials: Appease those who would vote against a proposal over some detail in the plan.

“You can't have splinter groups,” Cozort said.

He said that some people would always vote to reject a building proposal because of the tax impact, but that it was such “splinter” issues that would draw away needed votes.

The last vote on a bond issue for a new middle school in Lebanon failed by a margin of about 2 percent.

Superintendent Michael Harris said after talking to the Belmont school staff that he thought Lebanon and Belmont were comparable school districts.

“I thought the lessons should fit for us,” he said.

He said he didn't see any major problems with including fifth grade in a middle school.

“It seems to work very well,” he said.