Northside Middle School (Norfolk, Virginia)

Northside Middle School is an American public school, located in the community of Ocean View in the city of Norfolk, Virginia. It teaches grades six through eight. After completing grade eight, most students go to Granby High School, which is outside of Ocean View, but still inside Norfolk.

As with other Norfolk Public Schools, there is a statistical approach to improving education at Northside, with a heavy emphasis on test scores. The approach has shown some success in improving test scores, but is sometimes criticized by those who feels it doesn't help a child's overall education.

Special programs

A special education specialist works with children with learning disabilities, who make up roughly 13% of the overall student population. Roughly four percent of the children are designated as gifted.

Maritime Studies Pathway

Norfolk Public School's Maritime Studies Pathway is a special program for only three schools in the district: Ocean View Elementary School, Northside Middle School, and Granby High School. The environmental education content is concentrated on the Chesapeake Bay (the largest estuary in the U.S) and its watershed of 64,000 square miles (170,000 km²).

Components of the program include:

• Aqualab - A lab with where students directly handle live marine animals.
• The Chesapeake Bay Student Conference - Annual chance for students to share knowledge of the Bay with community members and other students.
• Field trips - Day and overnight troops to area of interest.
• Gardening - Learning through the school's courtyard garden.
• Hydroponics - Indoor gardening by students.
• Oyster restoration - About four oyster floats are monitored, to place healthy one year olds on an artificial oyster reef.
• Shad restoration - Part of program where 1000 baby shad are brought to Northside each spring. The fry are studied, monitored, fed, and released by students.
• Stream monitoring - Monitoring for pollution and other factors.
• Composting - Promotes recycling from cafeteria food.

External links

• Norfolk Public Schools
  • Northside Middle School home page
  • Performance Report
  • Map to school
• Success in the City: A once troubled urban school system is lauded for blazing a new path to academic progress (October 3, 2005) - Article in U.S. News & World Report, which mainly discusses board but also mentions this particular school.
• Students Having Fun While Using Aquaponics to Learn About Their Environment - Article in Aquaponics Journal which mentions students in the school (note: article has error in some instances of school name and type of school).