The Reijonen family got the call on Saturday: Ben would be moved from his from his fifth-grade class at Brookside Elementary to a split fifth/sixth-grade class.

Ted and Sharon Reijonen had heard rumors of classroom changes, but the Saturday call came just a day after they got their first official notice — in a letter from the principal on Friday, Sept. 21. On Monday morning, they were at Brookside before school to move their son’s desk.

Ben didn’t take the news well.

“He was very upset,” said Ted Reijonen. “He had bonded with his classmates, with the teacher. He wondered if it was something he did.”

Like many parents, the Reijonen’s were caught off guard by the widespread changes Shoreline School District officials implemented this week and last at elementary schools. (See related story.)

The Reijonens don’t mind their son being in a split class — it’s the timing and communication of the changes that’s an issue.

“I’m not OK he’s in a split class three weeks into the year,” Ted Reijonen said.

Last week and this, e-mails flew as parents related whether or not they’d gotten “the call.” Frustrations rose.

Ted Reijonen, like other parents, struggles to understand why the changes took place three weeks into the school year. The late change isn’t good academically or socially, Ted Reijonen said.

“The disruption this is causing doesn’t seem right,” he said.

Courtney Kesselring’s daughter Kareena Alaoui, a fourth-grader at Meridian Park Elementary, was not moved.

But her best friend was one of a handful of fourth-graders transferred into a split-class with roughly three times as many fifth graders. The fourth graders are now on a fifth- and sixth- grade lunch and recess schedule and won’t see their fourth-grade peers during the school day.

“There will be 9-year-old kids on the playground with 12-year-olds,” Kesselring said.

Her daughter’s friend came home from the first day of her split class with fifth-grade work, Kesselring said, and said that at lunch older boys were around them and talked loudly.

“She’s devastated,” Kesselring said. She said the girl’s mother is hesitant to talk to the press.

Some parents she knows said initially that their child could handle the change, but were upset after they saw that the fourth-graders would be isolated from their peers.

There have been other problems with the split class, she said. All the fifth-graders had laptops, so the school had to scramble to find some for the fourth-graders.

Parents at other schools said that some children arrived at school unable to find their own desks, or were denied a chance to bring cupcakes to let their child say good-bye to their classmates officially.

Overall, many parents are frustrated with district administrators, said Christy Adams, a Ridgecrest parent.

Some parents she knows were talking about going to the school to protest the changes, but decided against it because they felt it wasn’t the school’s decision.

“Morale is low,” she said. “I feel that (district administrators are) making the decision to put money first and don’t consider the impact on students. Then they present it to the community in a way that we should be excited about this.”