An organizer of Medford’s effort to overhaul its two large high schools said Friday that local support for the Oregon Small Schools Initiative remains high, despite inevitable obstacles.

"We are on board and there’s a lot of enthusiasm," said Mary Wieczorek, a South Medford language arts teacher working on the OSSI project. "And, as there should be, there are a lot of unanswered questions and worries."

Wieczorek expressed surprise that North Eugene High School might consider backing out of the process funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That school was among eight — including Medford’s two public high schools — chosen for the first year of funding from the $25 million fund.

Last year, the Medford schools received $2.5 million — $1.4 million for North High School and nearly $1.3 million for South High School — to create clusters of small, focused "learning communities" instead of large, impersonal traditional schools. Proponents argue that students succeed academically and socially in contained programs of no more than 400 students.

Staff members from both Medford schools have traveled to sites across the country to observe schools that already have made the change.

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"Everywhere people go, they’re seeing staff members who say this is worth it, but it’s hard work," Wieczorek said.

She speculated that the prospect of change may be unnerving to teachers, parents and students used to the structure and familiarity of traditional high schools.

"Any time you ask people to do something different, it’s hard," she said.

Plans call for the Medford high schools each to start one small school component by fall 2006, with four others to follow later. Crater High School in Central Point also applied for an OSSI grant this month.

Reach reporter JoNel Aleccia at 776-4465, or e-mail jaleccia@mailtribune.com

Eugene shows reservations about smaller ‘academies’

EUGENE — One of the Oregon high schools selected for a prestigious $900,000 grant to break into smaller "learning academies" is having some second thoughts about the plans.

Administrators from North Eugene High School recently visited two Seattle-area high schools that have broken into smaller schools-within-a-school. They came away inspired from the Tacoma School of the Arts, but deflated after a visit to suburban Mountlake Terrace High School.

Meanwhile, back in Eugene, some staff members have voiced growing anxiety about the proposal to do away with North Eugene as they know it. Students, also, have been expressing frustration at not being more involved in the planning.

Based on staff concerns, North Eugene’s "small schools" team decided a few weeks ago to back off original plans to have all four of the small schools up and running for fall 2006.

While that’s still a possibility, now only one school opening is promised. The others might not roll out until fall 2007.

Some at North Eugene want to take an all-staff vote within the next few weeks on whether to scrap the plan altogether and forgo what’s left of the three-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Meyer Memorial Trust.

It would be the second up-or-down vote. Last April, on the eve of learning North Eugene was one of eight Oregon schools selected to receive a small-schools grant, 83 percent of staff voted by secret ballot to accept the grant if offered. Medford’s two public high schools were among those awarded the grants.

Principal Peter Tromba, a small schools proponent, said he is worried that such moves could sabotage a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for North Eugene.

"I really want to stop talking about voting and just go forward," said Tromba.

But social studies teacher Tad Shannon, who visited the Seattle-area schools, said he’s more inclined to put on the brakes, especially after seeing some of the attempts to convert existing large high schools into learning academies.

"I was not impressed with the conversion school that we saw, and I haven’t heard of very many successful ones," said Shannon, who voted in favor of accepting the grant last year, despite reservations.