SPANISH FORK — So what should be done with these kids?

You know the ones: The girls are a bit too old to dress up Barbie in sparkly pink dresses but aren't ready to dress themselves up for a prom. The boys, well, they've moved past Matchbox models but can barely reach the pedals in the family car.

Teachers, school administrators and researchers debate what should be done to help students in "the middle years" — the kids between ages 10 and 15. After all, such students are no longer children — but they aren't quite ready for the teenage trappings of high school.

Administrators in the Nebo School District have tried to bridge the gap by placing students in sixth and seventh grades together in middle schools. Then, students in eighth and ninth grades attend junior high schools.

That's about to change, however. A massive change is on the horizon.

Beginning next fall in Springville and Mapleton, the sixth grade will move into elementary schools and the seventh grade will become part of junior high, eliminating middle schools for those areas.

Other parts of Nebo district will follow in 2007.

Officials at the 25,000-student district say they need the space in the existing middle-school buildings for use as either junior high or elementary schools.

Taxpayers will benefit, they say, because it's a cost-saving measure.

Students could also benefit because the populations in the junior highs and elementary schools will be smaller. In addition to converting the middle-school buildings for other uses, the district is building or remodelling six elementary schools.

"Most parents we've talked to are delighted to have their sixth-graders back in elementary; they get one more year with one teacher," said Lana Hiskey, Nebo spokeswoman.

In middle school, the students have seven periods a day, which can mean seven different classes and teachers. That can be difficult for 11- and 12-year-old sixth-graders to navigate.

Once returned to elementary school, sixth-graders will have the "continuity of being with one teacher, not having to worry about locker combinations in gym or lockers in the hall, and all the students bustling back and forth in the hall," Hiskey said. "They still get recess (in elementary school), get all their wiggles out."

One education expert says seventh-graders are the "biggest losers" in Nebo's plan to eliminate middle schools. Martin Tadlock, who has taught and researched middle school since 1981, says middle schools are known as "the last best chance to reach a child."

"A lot of decisions about dropping out of school (are made). It is a very critical developmental period of kids of that age," said Tadlock, a former administrator at Utah State University and now dean of the College of Professional and Graduate Studies at Bemidji State University in Minnesota.