The School Administrative District 15 Board of Directors voted unanimously Wednesday to move fifth-graders to Gray-New Gloucester Middle School starting in the 2009-2010 school year.

Chairman Alan Rich said the move was the most cost effective and least disruptive way to deal with unexpected student population growth at the lower grade levels. The population bubble, he said, will limit classroom space at Dunn Elementary School starting in the 2010-11 school year, and moving the fifth grade saves money – $65,000 to $100,000 – and allows the fifth-graders to take part in activities and programs offered at the middle school.

To help in the transition, a team of administrators, teachers and parents will be formed to address busing, scheduling, curriculum, lunch, recess and extracurricular activities. District officials will soon be putting out a call for community members interested in joining the transition team, Superintendent Victoria Burns said.

The transition should go smoothly, said board member Sandy MacDonald of Gray. The district underwent a similar process when it reorganized the K-5 system, she said.

“We’ve done this, and we’ve done it well,” said MacDonald.

The SAD 15 board held two public hearings on the plan, a recommendation from a committee formed to investigate solutions to the growing enrollment at the elementary level. Parents at those meetings worried that the younger students would have trouble fitting in at the middle school, and could run into trouble when mixing with high school kids on the combined high school-middle school bus.

School administrators, including Middle School Principal Sherry Levesque and Bruce Beasley, principal at Dunn Elementary, said the fifth-graders would fit easily into the middle school environment, pointing to other successful local middle schools that house grades 5-8.

While it is important to make sure the younger students are safe, MacDonald said Wednesday before the vote, officials and educators must also be careful not to shelter them. The fifth-graders have to feel they are a part of the school and not segregated from the rest of the students, she said.