Manchester Elementary math teacher Miles Adams, who's worked in the Pittsburgh Public Schools for 28 years, said pupils have cussed at him more often this school year than ever before.

But at least Mr. Adams, who's 6-foot-3 and 275 pounds, hasn't been shoved aside or knocked to the floor. He said colleagues have been assaulted by pupils 14 times this school year, with one hurt so seriously that he went on disability retirement.

Hoping to promote achievement and discipline among middle-grade pupils, Superintendent Mark Roosevelt closed seven middle schools last summer and shifted many of their pupils to 10 elementary schools he converted from a K-5 to K-8 configuration. But it's been rough going at several of the new K-8 schools, with widespread complaints about discipline, school climate, academic quality, overcrowding and even the quality of lunches for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.

Parents of younger pupils lament the disruptions to what had been quiet, effective neighborhood schools. While district officials expect the next school year to be calmer, some parents said they're pulling their children out of the new K-8 schools and enrolling them in charter schools.

Schaeffer Elementary alone is set to lose about 40 youngsters, or 8 percent of its population, to the new Propel Montour charter school in Kennedy. The impending exodus prompted Schaeffer Co-Principals LaVerne Anthony and Cynthia Zurchin to meet with parents Thursday to seek guidance.

Westwood Elementary and Stevens Elementary, both new K-8 schools, also are losing pupils to Propel. In all, Propel spokesman Bob Crytzer said, Pittsburgh Public Schools pupils are expected to fill 124 of the 280 seats at the K-6 charter school.

At the Intermediate Campus of Faison Arts Academy in Homewood, pervasive discipline problems prompted Mr. Roosevelt in January to move most of the eighth-graders to a wing at Westinghouse High School.

Because of fights and other disruptions, Mr. Adams said, it's been a "wasted year" for middle-grade pupils assigned to Manchester after the closing of Columbus Middle School on the North Side. He said younger pupils are distracted from their studies and copying the older youngsters' bad behavior.

"I spend an inordinate amount of time on discipline," he said.

He said a seventh-grade teacher was knocked over a table or desk, injuring his back, while trying to break up a fight in October. School district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said that teacher has gone on disability retirement.

While the K-8 schools try to limit contact between older and younger pupils, the efforts aren't foolproof. At Manchester, Mr. Adams said, two eighth-grade girls assaulted a fifth-grade girl in a darkened gymnasium.

The discipline problems among middle-grade pupils stem partly from the resentment they feel at returning to elementary buildings, where many found fewer athletic opportunities and freedoms than in middle schools.

"For them, it was a demotion," said Theresa Jenks-Williams, who's unhappy with changes at Westwood and plans to enroll her son, now a second-grader, at Propel Montour.

The district created the new K-8 schools at once instead of taking the usual approach of adding one grade annually for three years. A gradual conversion, beginning with pupils who were fifth-graders in 2005-06, would have allowed the district to create classes of middle-grade pupils who'd never set foot in a middle school.

By 2005-06, the district already had seven K-8 schools created in the traditional way and four more schools making a gradual conversion to K-8. Mr. Roosevelt said academic problems at middle schools prompted him to create 10 more K-8 schools right away.

"The scores were terrible," he said. "The cultures weren't working."

Now, some said, the culture at elementary buildings is damaged, too.

Mrs. Jenks-Williams said pupils from the closed Greenway Middle School brought issues Westwood hadn't faced before.

She said the older pupils try to outdress each other and squabble over petty matters. Perhaps nothing underscored the change in school culture as much as the note the principal sent home saying pupils in grades four through eight shouldn't wear green, the color favored by a local gang.

Lee Cottrell was part of a parents group that successfully lobbied against Schaeffer's closing in 2004 and last year. But now he's giving up, saying his two children will attend Propel Montour next school year because Schaeffer's culture was damaged by the expansion to K-8.

He said the school took on a different feel when some teachers moved from Schaeffer's initial site in Crafton Heights to the second building, for grades four through eight, in Sheraden.

He said staff members don't return calls or answer e-mails as quickly as they did before.

The co-principals rotate between the buildings, an arrangement Mr. Cottrell criticized.

"We don't know which principal is in which building on which day," he said.

Mr. Cottrell questioned neighborhood safety at the Sheraden site and said excessive noise at the Sheraden building represented a break with Schaeffer's sedate climate.

"In the classroom, you should be able to control your kids," he said.

Miller African-Centered Academy has a "different rhythm" after taking pupils from the closed Milliones Middle School, Bonnie Young-Laing, a parent, said. "I think there have been some fights, some horseplay, loudness."

Ms. Pugh wasn't able to say whether discipline problems among middle-grade pupils at K-8 schools are worse than they have been at middle schools. But she said officials realized that overnight creation of K-8 schools would bring challenges and implemented a special discipline program at five schools needing extra help, including Faison, Manchester and Miller.

She said the program also was introduced at four previously established K-8 schools and one middle school that experienced an increase in discipline problems this school year because of population changes resulting from the district's school consolidation plan.

The School District of Philadelphia has closed 17 middle schools in the past five years, shifting many of the pupils to K-8 schools. In two cases when the district converted schools to K-8 overnight, problems ensued, in part because of imperfect planning.

"Kids are opportunists," said Naomi Gubernick, an executive director in Philadelphia's chief academic office. "They saw the opportunity to have a little fun, and they did."

Gregory Thornton, the district's chief academic officer, said the second year at each school was smoother and that the climate in those buildings today is the same as in the district's other K-8 schools. He said K-8 schools have fewer discipline problems and more parental involvement than middle schools; achievement gains, however, have not been proven.

Mr. Cottrell said he and other Schaeffer parents won't be around to see how Pittsburgh's experiment fares. "We really believed in the school," he said.