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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – If you live in the Indianapolis Public Schools district, get ready for a possible overhaul of the middle and high schools.

At Tuesday night’s board meeting, IPS proposed separating middle and high school students.

Officials want to either create schools that serve kindergarten through 8th graders, or create 7th and 8th grade schools separately. All existing high school buildings would remain open.

“For one, this is about safety to have students separated by age because we don’t want 7th graders who might be 12 with 18-year-olds and seniors, but also we want to create for them programs that are developmentally appropriate for middle school students so we can have better achievement outcomes for our students,” said Wanda Legrand, Deputy Superintendent for Academics at IPS.

The timeline for this proposal would happen over the course of three years.

“The challenges or things we looks at are family preference and do our families want to have more K-8 schools for their students in middle years? Do they want to have more 7 and 8’s? And then what do we do next. Do we create new buildings? Do we enhance our current buildings? And also programming because we want to make sure when we separate schools, we have developmentally appropriate middle school programming.”

The proposal could be approved at the board meeting next Thursday night.