Parents meeting at two Fresno middle schools Thursday evening expressed outrage and concern over a plan to move the rigorous college-prep International Baccalaureate program.

Fresno Unified School District intends to shift the IB program from Wawona Middle School to Cooper Middle School in August.

Parents at both meetings complained they weren't given enough notice about the move.

At Wawona, angry parents began speaking out even before Principal Mike Darling finished explaining the plan.

One Wawona parent said the IB move was a done deal -- and will create a transportation nightmare for his family.

"Literally, I could have four kids at four different schools next year," said John Bracamontes.

The Fresno Unified board voted Jan. 25 to move the IB program from Wawona to Cooper. The board will vote Wednesday on districtwide boundary changes to facilitate moving the IB program. Wawona would shift from the Fresno High attendance area into the Bullard area, setting the stage for moving the IB program to Cooper.

Cooper would become an IB-only school in 2012-13, with sixth and seventh grades in its first year. It would have grades 6-8 by 2013-14.

Some parents of Cooper seventh-graders were upset that their children won't finish middle school there.

"My daughter turned down Manchester GATE to come here. She wants to stay here," said April Taylor.

Parents at both schools were upset with the timing of the plan.

"Everyone should have been notified sooner," Danielle Clark said, "since the [district's master plan] was approved in 2009.

"There's been plenty of time to notify the general public that that's what they're moving to, so people can make plans," she said.

Trustee Michelle Asadoorian, who attended the Wawona meeting, agreed that the district failed to give parents notice of the proposed changes and opportunity to be heard.

"The unfortunate reality is that board already voted five to two, and that is definite," said Asadoorian, who voted with trustee Larry Moore against moving the IB program. "The confusion exists because they voted without any public meetings."

"I think parents have a right to be heard," said Deborah Johnson, president of the Fresno Parent-Teacher Association, at the Wawona meeting. "If it works for their children's lives, then great, but the truth of the matter is that everyone is affected by this."

Next school year, incoming and current IB students at Wawona would go to Cooper, while Cooper eighth-graders would have the option to either apply for the IB program, attend Fort Miller Middle School -- which will become the neighborhood school for most Cooper-area students -- or apply to transfer to another middle school.

Trustee Carol Mills told parents at the Cooper meeting that the process "is confusing and a little messy."

J.R. Ybarra and Priscilla Dominguez are unsure which school their seventh-grade son, who is in a special education class at Cooper, would attend next year.

"This year has been his biggest progress," said Dominguez.

And Cooper parent Susan Gray said she's disappointed that her seventh-grade daughter, who takes classes for gifted students at Cooper, will likely have to attend a new school in August. "How unfair is it to make her move for her last junior high year?" she asked.

Mills said before the meeting that the agency that certifies IB programs is requiring districts to have IB-only middle schools by 2014.

As an IB-only school, Cooper would be a "choice school" and would no longer have elementary feeder schools, whose students automatically move on to the middle school.

Currently, four elementary schools feed into Cooper: Homan, Roeding, Wilson and Slater. With Cooper an IB-only school, students from Homan, Roeding and Wilson would go to Fort Miller; Slater's sixth-graders would move on to Wawona.