Chandler Middle School slated to be closed, RTD reports
The 300 students at Chandler Middle School in North Richmond may be looking for a new place to hit the books come autumn, according to a report in last week’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Richmond’s Chandler Middle School almost certainly will close at the end of the school year because of failure to meet federal academic standards, a small group of parents learned during a meeting last night at the North Side school.
The school is in the seventh and final year of improvement efforts prescribed in No Child Left Behind guidelines. Under that plan, if a school fails to reach a sufficient level of academic success, the school district has to close the school or turn it over to the state.
Based on testing earlier in the school year and ongoing biweekly work sessions at the school, administrators are projecting that Chandler will fail to achieve test scores necessary to pass.
Several school administrators and School Board members on hand said turning the school over to the state is not a viable option. Barring a challenge to the federal law, closing the school is a formality.
The same story noted a possible new future for the school, which is located on Brookland Park Boulevard:
What will become of Chandler — in 1960, it became the first school in the city to be integrated — also was left undecided. Former board member Carol A.O. Wolf suggested it as a new home for Richmond Community High School, a 200-student school for the academically gifted.
Carey would neither deny nor confirm that as a possibility.
“It’s all on the table,” he said.
Community’s current home on Patterson Avenue is in need of millions of dollars of improvements to make it handicap accessible.
I would like for the schools that FED INTO Chandler to be evaluated for accuracy. These Children did not all of a sudden get “uneducated”. School is a building block atmosphere, if they didnt get it in lower grades then they were all ready set up to fail in middle school.
Not that Chandler doesnt have issues, but what about the schools where they GOT these kids??
If these kids were passing with flying colors in elementary (such as the very suspect Fairfield Elem..) then why the sudden turndown?
Skewing information will eventually make its way into the public somehow. Get it together RPS.
Excellent points and questions Betty.
I know my oldest received all A’s and B’s in RPS and high SOL scores, however, going into a well touted private middle school, we discovered she was a year or two behind in math. I had to pay for a math tutor for her to catch up with the kids coming from the very few good RPS, private, and county schools. Essentially many schools are only preparing kids in “how” to answer multiple choice questions -it’s called “the process of elimination” and starting in 4th grade it becomes unbearable to watch as a parent. You don’t have to know very much about the subject to pass -just be a good test taker.
Not only are they teaching to the test, the students are made to take tests that are riddled with grammar and spelling errors, poorly drawn imagery like a bear that can be a rat or a dog or a clock with the long and short hand the same length, and just plain incorrect facts like plants need oxygen instead of CO2.
“Chandler Middle School is where i learn and no matter what anyone says we are not going down without a fight for success”.Who ever said we wouldn’t come out on top you are positively with out a doubt wrong,it’s one thing to cut off a childs’ education and put them in a new environment,but a whole nother thing is to tell us we will fail.ONE TEAM ONE GAOL!
Shellie- No one here feels that you the students are failing. It is the adults that are failing you. Not all of them, I am sure you have some wonderful teachers and I am very sorry your school is closing.
We as a city want you to have the very best, just like our counties, so that you can be and do whatever you want in the future. We want nothing to hold you back. Good luck, I hope your next school works well for you!
I love Chandler Middle, I’ve been there since 6th grade and it breaks my heart to see in the newspaper that my school is closing but just like my principal Mr.Mason said once its closed he’s gonna look in the newspaper and say now why did they close Chandler down again because we blew every other school out of the water with them benchmarks and we are gonna pass that SOL test. I’m so tired of people saying those kids at Chandler are dumb or those kids at Chandler are bad. I love this school and when it closes I will still love this school. THE PRESTIGIOUS CHANDLER MIDDLE SCHOOL ONE TEAM ONE GOAL