Emma St. Jean, 10, a student at the Edward S. Rhodes School, has her say on the proposed shift of sixth-graders from the middle schools to the elementary schools. Other students wait their turn behind her.

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The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

CRANSTON — After three hours of impassioned pleas by parents, students and teachers opposed to the move, the School Committee voted late last night of voting to shift sixth grade classes from the city’s middle schools to its elementary schools this fall.

Five members — Chairman Michael A. Traficante, Andrea M. Iannazzi, Steven A. Stycos Donna Tocco-Greenaway and Frank Lombardi, voted to move the students.

Two members, Paul H. Archetto and Deborah C. Greifer, were opposed.

The meeting capped months of debate over the financial, social and academic implications of the proposal.

Administration officials and committee members who backed the move made no secret of the fact that the School Department’s gloomy financial picture drove the decision.

“We are not here to railroad your children,” Traficante declared, at the beginning of the heated meeting, adding later, “we are … attempting to survive.”

Opponents, sensing that the committee would approve the move, did not mince words.

“I am a parent, I am a taxpayer,” said Pam Schiff, the mother of a child at Park View Middle School. “I am saddened. I am disillusioned.”

The department is projecting a roughly $4-million shortfall for the fiscal year that ends June 30 and an $8- to $16-million shortfall next year.

The state’s looming deficit means a cash infusion from Smith Hill is unlikely.

And with local elections approaching this fall, the mayor and City Council appear less than enthusiastic about a property tax increase.

School officials are inching closer to a lawsuit against City Hall — known as a Caruolo action — demanding more in local education aid.

In the meantime, officials are counting on the sixth-grade shift to save roughly $1 million next year and $1.3 million every year thereafter.

Critics have questioned those figures, noting that they include savings from a rejiggering of the middle school schedule that was slated to go through, in some form, with or without the sixth-grade move.

But proponents say the shift would allow for significant savings — noting, for instance, that the department would be able to eliminate several assistant principal and guidance counselor positions from the shrunken middle schools at an annual savings of several hundred thousand dollars.

The School Committee is expected to work through the details of implementation in the coming weeks.

Whatever the financial implications, critics have argued that dollars and cents should not be driving the decision, with the social and intellectual development of the city’s adolescents hanging in the balance.

They say sixth graders are better served by the more rigorous academics of the middle school, with its reliance on teachers who specialize in specific subjects.

They also trumpet the middle schools’ collaborative team-teaching approach, which allows instructors to share strategies and develop interdisciplinary curriculum.

Administration officials say sixth-grade instructors will have the freedom to continue team teaching when they relocate to the elementary schools.

They also play up plans for enhanced reading and math instruction for the relocated sixth grade.

And supporters, including some parents, say sixth-graders would benefit from another year at small, neighborhood elementary schools.

There is no consensus, among experts, about whether sixth graders are better served in an elementary school, a middle school or a K-8 school.

But most say challenging, age-appropriate instruction is important, whatever the setting.

The School Committee’s vote would reverse a 13-year-old policy of assigning sixth-graders to what were once junior high schools.

The department made the move in the midst of a nationwide disenchantment with the junior high model.

And the shift to a middle school approach was about more than reshuffling grades.

It was an attempt to effect a cultural change — to replace the junior high school’s impersonal march from classroom to classroom with a more collaborative, team-teaching model that would provide awkward adolescents with a more personalized education experience.

School officials emphasized that, even with a shift of the sixth graders back to the elementaries, they plan to keep this approach in place at the three middle schools — Park View, Hugh B. Bain and Western Hills — even after the sixth graders leave.

dscharfe@projo.com