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player ready...For the third time in seven years, administrators in Wilmette Public Schools District 39 are looking at the feasibility of creating some sort of full-time kindergarten program in their elementary schools, and school board members got a report on the issue when they met Sept. 28.
But while the Illinois state budget situation – and its effect on local school districts’ budgets – remains in limbo, District 39 will have to hold off on deciding whether or not to further consider expanding its kindergarten in any way, Superintendent Raymond Lechner said Oct. 1.
That’s in part because of the estimated costs of hiring teachers and building space to provide district families with full-day services, he said – more than $4 million in program start-up needs — and more than half a million dollars annually thereafter in personnel costs, according to administrators’ estimates.
“Right now we’re pausing all our considerations, because we don’t know what’s happening in Springfield,” Lechner said. “We would have to look at the financial impact (of kindergarten expansion), at what we could afford, and, right now, that means it’s going to have to stay on a wish list, along with other things we might want to do but will have to prioritize.”
Lechner said Oct. 1 that administrators decided to take another look at full-day kindergarten after parents began asking the district to do so earlier this year.
“We have had some new parents who moved into Wilmette. They asked us to look at the issue again, probably in May, and we had dialogue over the summer,” Lechner said.
District 39 currently offers optional free half-day kindergarten at all four elementary schools. According to the report that Curriculum and Instruction Administrator Melanie Goffen Horowitz gave school board members at their Sept. 28 meeting, about 300-350 students have been enrolled each year between 2003-04 and the current 2015-16 year.
There are potential benefits to creating a full-day kindergarten program, Horowitz said. It would cut by half the number of students each teacher would see each day, since teachers wouldn’t be dealing with two separate morning and afternoon classes, she said.
In answer to questions by board member Tracy Kearney, Horowitz said many teachers indicated they would prefer that.
“These teachers frequently voice concerns about addressing the many needs that present with two classes of kindergarten, and (about) maintaining appropriate levels of quality communication and reporting with their parents,” Horowitz said.
Some teachers said a longer day would allow them to present the kindergarten curriculum in a more relaxed and age-appropriate way, Horowitz told board member Kimberly Alcantara, although both Horowitz and Lechner pointed out that teachers are fulfilling students’ curriculum needs in the existing half-day format.
Students might also have fewer problems with full-day classes in first grade if they attended full-day kindergarten, Horowitz said. Another transition problem, when children come into District 39 from other privately run kindergarten programs, could also decline, she said.
But the district would have to build an estimated two more kindergarten classrooms in each elementary school she said, and that would cost an estimated $4.3 million. The district would have to pay an estimated $557,104 in new personnel costs to staff the new classes, she said.
The report Horowitz gave said the district could look at three alternatives. It could continue the current half-day program; create a full-day program; or create a fee-based program of non-curricular half-day enrichment classes that parents could pay to have their children attend before or after their regular kindergarten class time.
District 39 officials have considered full-day kindergarten more than once since 2008, when the district’s community review committee, known as the CRC, recommended that the district undertake a feasibility study. According to Horowitz, officials put off exploring kindergarten options, especially during the time in 2010 and 2011 leading up to the district’s successful 2011 tax rate referendum request.
After the referendum, officials returned to the issue, publishing a report in February of 2012. In May of that year, the board tabled further study, citing fears that full-day kindergarten would displace the district’s early-childhood program, and would hurt community groups that provide private kindergarten classes.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy
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