Schools

Kindergarten Will Start an Hour Earlier Next Year

Five-year-old kindergarten students will spend an extra hour in school, mimicking the schedules of first- through fifth-graders.

Five-year-old kindergarten students will start an hour earlier next year, matching their school day to those of first through fifth grade students.

Currently, senior kindergarten students start at 9:05 a.m., whereas first- through fifth-grade students start at 8:05 a.m. 's K5 students start at 9:15 a.m, with first- through fifth-grade students starting an hour earlier.

With the school board's unanimous consensus Wednesday night, kindergarten students at each school will start at the same time as other grade levels.

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The difference in start times between kindergarten and other grades dates back to labor contracts drafted 12 years ago, when the district first started offering full-day kindergarten. The district used to offer two half-days of kindergarten per day, and in creating a full-day option, combined the two half-days into a full, six-hour day.

District Administrator Mary Gavigan said the change would not raise expenses for the school district, as current teacher schedules allow additional instructional time.

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The district still offers half-day kindergarten, but only about five students at each school opt in to the program. Half-day kindergarten will still be offered next year.

Laura Myrah, the district's director of Curriculum and Instruction, said the idea of a longer kindergarten day has been brought up numerous times in recent years, and of the more than 15 school districts she contacted, none of them had staggered start times.

The longer school day is also a matter of convenience for parents that have kids in first through fifth grades. Myrah said some prospective parents have held off until first grade to enroll their kids in the school district due to the shorter school day.

Several board members raised questions about whether a seven-hour day would be too much school for a 5- or 6-year-old student.

"I think it's easy to get caught up in pushing them, but they've only been around for five years," board member Pam Woodard said. "We shouldn't be pushing them so hard that there are winners and losers that early."

Myrah said there is not much research about the impact of a longer school day on students, but there is plenty of research on making the best of the hours within a given school day.

Myrah said no new curriculum would be introduced, and she said the additional classroom time could be spent toward rhyming and phonetic exercises instead of sitting at a desk reading.

"Its not an extra hour of new curriculum, it's more time to learn what's already on their plate in a fun and engaging manner," she said.

Gavigan said those more interactive learning methods take more time than others.

Cumberland School Principal Jayne Heffron said that there is a bit of a learning gap between kindergarten and first grade.

"We have a significant number of kindergartners going to first grade requiring reading support, which tells us we have a misalignment between kindergarten and first grade in some way," she said.

Out of the 300 additional minutes of school per week, students would spend an extra 10 minutes in a weekly art class, an extra 10 minutes in a weekly library class, an extra five minutes in each of their twice-a-week music classes, which last 25 minutes each, and an additional 15 minutes of physical education, changing two 30-minute gym classes per week into three 25-minute gym classes. The remaining 110 minutes of classroom time will be mainly dedicated toward literacy and math concepts.

Recess time will increase by 10 minutes per day, making for two 15-minute recesses per day, except on half-days with gym class.

Richards School Principal Mark Tenorio said parents will be introduced to the new start time during kindergarten registration in January.


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