Crowds gathered at the Wauwatosa School District board meeting Monday night to hear a new proposal to close Whitman and Longfellow middle schools. Those middle school students would shift to other schools: 4-year-old kindergarten through 6th graders would go to the elementary schools while 7th through 12th graders would go to the high schools. All of the elementary schools would remain open.”We do believe that a junior kindergarten through 6th grade, 7-12 model does allow us to accelerate academic growth and to become the school district, we all strive to become,” Superintendent Demond Means said. Many at the meeting, including student Emmalee Jablonicky, did not want the middle schools to close.”In elementary school, you barely leave the classroom except for specials. In middle school, you move around a bit and in high school, you move around a lot so students would need middle school as a slow transition,” Jablonicky said.Some were concerned about the proposal’s impact on the STEM program and encouraged administrators to look into other options.”If the district wants to maintain all the elementary schools, move to a different model. I think we should put a little more thought into exploring a junior high model,” said Todd Koehler, who worked on the Tosa 2075 Task Force. The board is expected to vote next Monday on whether or not to put two referendum questions related to this proposal on the November ballot: one for $60 million in capital improvements and another for $48 million in operational expenses. If approved, Means said the soonest the new reconfiguration could go into place is for the 2029-2030 school year.