CENTRAL FALLS — When Central Falls schools open today, students from elementary school to the high school can expect a plethora of new programs designed to keep them in school, increase academic achievement and include special-education students into mainstream classes.

This year Central Falls High School, which is under a state mandate to reorganize, will be divided into the lower house and upper house. The lower house, which comprises the ninth and tenth graders, will be broken up into teams that consist of teachers from the four core subjects plus a special-education and English as a Second Language teacher who will work with about 100 students per team. Those students will remain with just those teachers.

Supt. Frances Gallo says the plan is built on the middle-school model that has been successful at Calcutt Middle School. Gallo said the students will be with the same teachers so they become familiar with them. The teachers will have 40 minutes each day except on Friday to do planning and discuss their students’ progress.

The hope is that teams will help students coming from the eighth grade to feel at home, comfortable and successful so they don’t drop out, Gallo said. Half of the eighth graders who go to the high school do not finish the ninth grade.

“We lose half of kids before tenth grade. They fall off the face of the earth. We don’t know where they go.” Gallo said. “We are determined to turn that around. It’s certainly one of reasons we are in corrective action.”

The development of the upper and lower house is part of a state-mandated plan to break up the high school into smaller learning communities. The upper house, with 11th and 12th graders, will be like regular high school with block scheduling. In the school year that follows, the upper house is expected to be broken up into academies that include health and science, business and entrepreneurial, and visual and performing arts.

The high school will open with a new academic center which will be run by Adrian Watts-Driscoll, who works for the University of Rhode Island. The academic center ran a dual enrollment program this summer that allowed 17 students to enroll in two freshman college course to get college credit as well as school credit. The academic center is equipped with computers and provides students with tutors.

Mario Andrade will return as principal for the high school. Michael Lauro, Evelyn Cosmey Jones and Andrew Benn will serve as assistant principals. Maria SanMartino is the assistant to secondary schools. She will help students transitioning from the eighth grade to the ninth grade, Gallo said.

Students from Calcutt Middle School will be housed in two buildings, Calcutt and Calcutt Too, which is at the former Holy Trinity building on Cowden Street. The registration center was moved out of Holy Trinity and is now located at 521 Dexter St.

Calcutt has new assistant principals, Frank DeVall and Joseph Rousseau, a behavior specialist, who will spend most of his time at Calcutt Too. Students can expect exploratory activities involving science and robots and literacy and art, Gallo aid.

Calcutt, Sojourner House and Youth Voices are among 16 finalists for a grant from Woods Johnston Foundation that would allow them to develop an educational program on dating violence. The school district is expecting a site visit on Friday.

At the elementary school level, Maureen Azar will take over as principal of Ella Risk Elementary School. She replaces Dan Davis, who has left the school. Sharon Cabral, who was principal at Robertson School, will run Robertson and Feinstein Elementary Schools. Feinstein, with a projected enrollment of 160 students and Robertson with a projected enrollment of 185, have less than expected enrollment. Gallo said that teacher leaders will take charge of the school in Cabral’s absence.

Ella Risk has established a partnership with the Rhode Island College Sherlock Center to improve assimilation of special-education students into the regular classroom. Last year, the school began integrating special-education students in three classrooms. This year it will be throughout the entire school. Classrooms with special-education students will have a special-education teacher and a regular classroom teacher. Gallo said she hopes to expand the program to the other schools.

tpina@projo.com