Medford’s high schools have more than $2.5 million to re-create themselves as a cluster of small, focused learning communities, but students have questions about the transformation.

Since Medford’s two high schools received money — $1.4 million for North and $1.28 million for South — from the Oregon Small Schools Initiative last spring, teachers, administrators and students have studied how large traditional high schools can become small schools united under a single banner.

"Kids want to know how many schools we’ll have and what they’ll be called, but we don’t know yet," said Aubrey Bottorff, a North Medford High School senior who is working on the Oregon Small Schools Initiative

She’s heading a project to gather student questions and ideas. Some of their top concerns include seeing friends at school, taking honors classes, getting a broad choice of electives, having less-crowded classrooms and choosing which small school to attend.

Last week she and her fellow students got a look at how one large high school in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, remade itself. Glen Este High School, a school much like North Medford, split into five small schools three years ago. Administrators from that school visited Medford to share their experiences.

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"We decided students could do better," Glen Este Principal Dennis Ashworth told North Medford students as he shared the story of how his school changed. "We wanted them to be challenged. We asked teachers and kids what makes it worth coming to school every day."

Building on the passions of students and teachers, Glen Este’s officials created small schools dedicated to performing arts, American history, communication, science and health science.

Ashworth and Katie Hauer, coordinator of Glen Este’s school of American studies, said kids in Ohio were most concerned about choosing their small school and still seeing their friends.

Ashworth said the small schools group kids with similar interests, so it’s easy to make friends, and students from all the small schools play sports and do activities together.

Small schools won’t change the student/teacher ratio, but because of the way students are grouped, teachers will know their students better and be able to offer more help, he said. Each school can offer electives and advanced classes in subjects that appeal to its focused students, but at Glen Este, students generally can’t take classes at a small school that they aren’t enrolled in.

"We are here to tell our story," Ashworth said. "You will decide how it looks here."

Both North and South Medford expect to divide into five small schools. Each small school will have about 400 students. The schools haven’t yet decided how to divide.

Eyes alight with the possibilities, Bottorff said she plans to get more students involved in creating their vision for the schools.

"We can do anything we want," she said.

Reach reporter Anita Burke at 776-4485, or e-mail aburke@mailtribune.com