By Laura McAlister
Journal Editor
Hoover has a new school, but its building is all too familiar to many in the community.
In an effort to alleviate overcrowding, the city system has implemented a realignment plan that will go into effect this school year. At the heart of the plan is a new intermediate school that will be housed in the old R.F. Bumpus Middle School building in the Lake Cyrus neighborhood.
Bumpus will move to Hoover High School’s freshman campus on Flemings Parkway, and the high school will once again be a school for grades 9-12.
The new school, named Brock’s Gap Intermediate, will house fifth and sixth graders from South Shades Crest, Deer Valley and Trace Crossings elementary schools. When class starts for Hoover students Aug. 15, the new intermediate school should have about 750 students.
“This is really a huge realignment for our school system,” said Scott Mitchell, Brock’s Gap’s principal. “It allows for growth in this area, which is really where the growth is in Hoover. It just made sense on paper, but really, it made sense for the kids developmentally.”
The three-story building will be set up with fifth graders on the first floor and sixth graders on the third. The second story will be reserved for elective classes and other special programs.
Mitchell said the layout of the building will allow the two grades to be separate, but fifth graders will still get a transition into changing classes and using lockers, things they typically wouldn’t do until middle school.
“The fifth graders will still have one primary teacher, but they will change teachers for social studies and science,” he said. “That will kind of prepare them for the shift to sixth grade. It’s a lot for them to handle at one time, and this kind of allows for an easier transition.”
The intermediate school also will change its class groupings. In middle school, teachers in each grade are divided into groups numbered one-four and work together in teams. At Brock’s Gap, classes in each grade will also be broken down into four groups, but their names will be the Explorers, Discoverers, Navigators and Voyagers.
“This is new to all of us, so we wanted to kind of take on an explorer theme,” Mitchell said. “We are going to keep the same mascot – the Buccaneers. We’re just going to go with a more friendly pirate.”
One drawback to the intermediate school concept, Mitchell said, is sports. There won’t be pep rallies and teams as there are at the middle school. Mitchell hopes to change that by having some friendly in-school competitions between the grade groupings.
He suspects that won’t happen until the next school year. In the meantime, he and the faculty and staff at Brock’s Gap are gearing up for the new year.
During the summer, Mitchell has been meeting with teachers, who are settling into their classrooms.
Mitchell comes to the new school from Deer Valley Elementary, where he was an assistant principal, so he already knows some of the students and teachers coming in this school year.
So far, he said, the communities have been open to the system’s realignment plan and the opening of the intermediate school. Since most elementary schools are named after the community they are in, they went in the same direction when naming the intermediate school. Brock’s Gap is an historic landmark in the area, which was settled in the 1800s.
“There was a ridge that cut through the railroad tracks known as Brock’s Gap,” Mitchell said. “We wanted something historical and unique, since the school is a new concept for us. Hoover has always had the traditional school model.”
The traditional model would be a kindergarten-fifth grade elementary school, sixth-eighth middle and ninth-12th grade high school. While many other systems in the area have intermediate schools, Hoover will be the first with a fifth-sixth grade school. Mitchell suspects more systems will move in this direction.
“There are several fifth-sixth grade schools nationwide, and they are very successful,” he said. “I think people on the other side of town are going to be paying close attention to us. With great teachers, students and communities already in place, I don’t think we can fail. ”
