We, the undersigned, are opposed to the recommended plan to send our JW Gerth students to Doon Public School starting in grade 5 for reasons including, but not limited to, the following. We feel that children in grade 5 and 6 are too young to be exposed to a middle school culture where discussions of sex, drugs, and alcohol are common. We do not want our children to miss out on the leadership opportunities afforded to other children in K-6 schools in the Waterloo Region school district. In relation, we do not want our younger children left in a K-4 school where older students are no longer present to mentor younger ones. Furthermore, many of us have two or more young children at JW Gerth who will, as a result of this plan, be separated and attending two different schools with two different start and end times; consequently, older children will be unable to walk to and from school with younger siblings and this will force parents to manage two different drop-off and two different pick-up times for young children. For the aforementioned reasons, we call on the Waterloo Region school board to reconsider the recommended plan and find an alternate solution that keeps our children at JW Gerth for grades 5 and 6.