Middle school lottery for Rumney planned for month’s end

REVERE – Public school educators are resorting to a parent lottery for the second consecutive year to fill a shortage of middle school seats in the Rumney Marsh Academy.School Superintendent Paul Dakin said 190 parents of fifth graders are seeking 160 sixth-grade seats in Rumney Marsh. The city’s newest school is scheduled to open in August.”The workers are moving down from the top floors doing cleaning and the furniture arrives next week,” Dakin said.That is good news to teachers and parents who can look to the near future when Revere will have three public middle schools including the 17-year-old Garfield; the Susan Anthony built in 2006 and Rumney Marsh located on American Legion Highway.For now, middle school parents are watching for school officials to announce the date for the middle school seat lottery. Dakin said the seat drawing will be held at the end of the month, probably in the City Council Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.Parents of 13- to 15-year-old students competed for seats in 2007 when 140 seats were up for grabs in Anthony. Requests from Paul Revere, Lincoln and Whelan parents exceeded that number.Dakin knows how parents vying for their child’s middle school of choice feel.His son was required to attend Beachmont for a year when the district-wide system was introduced in 1991 rather than the family’s school of choice.He said giving every parent a chance to compete for a middle school seat is fair. It ensures that public school students across the city attend middle school with kids from different backgrounds and different races and ethnicities.The public schools face other space crunches as one academic year approaches its close and another looms ahead.Beachmont will no longer be a middle school beginning next fall. Instead, 400 Paul Revere students will attend school at Beachmont while Paul Revere is razed and construction begins on a new school.Mayor Thomas Ambrosino has cleared the way to spend $1.8 million on acquiring five properties around the current school site. The land will be taken and homes located on the sites demolished during the summer. Dakin said foundation construction will start in the fall.