District 63 to Consider Full-Day Kindergarten at Concord

The said Tuesday it will likely consider during its February meeting whether to move to a full-day kindergarten schedule at .

If the district approves the change, Concord will adopt the new schedule for the 2011-12 school year, Concord Principal Laura Anderson said.

Parents could opt out of the full-day kindergarten if they felt it was not appropriate for their child, Anderson said. Kindergarten classes now run on a half-day schedule that gives parents the option to pay tuition to extend the class to a full day. Anderson said she proposed the plan at the last Teaching and Learning Committee meeting.

A longer school day would give staff more opportunities to intervene when students have trouble with social or early-learning skills, Anderson said. She noted that the school is seeing an increase in the number of students who need extra help.

The new schedule would also roughly double the amount of time for learning each day from two to four hours, she said.

Anderson pointed to research from the ‘80s and ‘90s that followed kids from kindergarten through fifth grade and found the students performed more successfully throughout elementary school when they attended a full-day kindergarten. 

“There isn’t a lot of new research because they found it worked,” Anderson said.

In addition to extending the day, the school would add an interventionist into each kindergarten classroom who would work with students on specific skills, Anderson said. The school would likely employ the interventionist in place of a teaching assistant.

“The teachers who joined us have been seeing the same issues,” said Teaching and Learning Committee chair Laura Draper. “They understood this new strategy for kindergarten is necessary.” 

Board Secretary Beth Lopez said that she was concerned about the physical space required for full-day kindergarten classes.

Next year, Anderson said she anticipates there will probably be enough kindergarten students for two classrooms. Because the school will be down one section each for the first and third grades, she said there will be two additional empty classrooms in the event the school would need more space.

Board member Timothy Banks asked how the classes would address student fatigue.

Teachers would structure the day so students had ample breaks and playtime, as well as the opportunity to nap if they needed rest, Anderson said.

The board said it hopes to make a decision prior to March, when Concord is scheduled to hold its Kindergarten Roundup for students entering kindergarten in the fall.