Wallingford online petition keeps focus on full-day K

As published in the Record Journal on Thursday April 4, 2013

By Eric Vo
Record-Journal staff
evo@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2235
Twitter:@ericvoRJ

WALLINGFORD - A local parent has started an online petition in the hope of bringing full day kindergarten sessions to the town’s K-2 schools. As of Wednesday, the petition had garnered 30 signatures from residents who support the idea.

School Superintendent Salvatore Menzo didn’t say whether he supports full-day kindergarten, but said he had talked to the parent who started the petition and explained the process involved in putting a full-day program in operation.

“It’s not so easy. Sometimes it gets portrayed as it’s just a matter of taking the half-day (program) and making it a full day,” Menzo said. “Instruction has to be changed, instructional materials have to be acquired ... it’s a multi-faceted approach.” A full-day kindergarten program “provides 900 hours of actual schoolwork for a minimum of 180 days,” according to state Department of Education data on kindergarten enrollment for the 2012-13 school year. According to the data, about 74 percent of Connecticut kindergartners — in 103 school systems, seven charter schools and 11 magnet schools — attend full-day programs. About 21 percent — in 36 school systems, including Wallingford — have half-day programs. Only nine school systems and one charter school — or 5 percent of kindergartners — are enrolled in extended-day programs, which provide more than 450 hours but less than 900 hours of schoolwork for a minimum of 180 days.

Menzo said the petition’s 30 signatures indicate there’s only a small group of parents who support full-day kindergarten. But if the time came, he said, he would discuss it with the Board of Education and see where the program might fit in with the strategic plan.

School Board Chairwoman Roxane McKay said she isn’t sure how she feels about full-day kindergarten because she doesn’t have enough information about it.

“I need to know more about it before deciding if I’m for or against it,” McKay said. “I have no data on the pros and cons specific for Wallingford or the specific nuances as it relates to Wallingford.”

The school board and administrators have been completing other projects “so we can embrace all-day kindergarten, so we don’t do it haphazardly,” board member Michael Votto said.

“We’ve gone where we have to go in terms of academics and new programs for students — we’ve done that and gone over to the other side,” Votto said.

Maintenance projects are being completed, Votto said, and he believes discussions about kindergarten should start soon. But if the town does switch to a full-day program, he said there needs to be time for students to develop socialization skills.

“Children don’t do enough socialization ... teach them how to play and talk to one another (outside the educational setting),” Votto said. “We don’t make them do enough of that, we’re too wound up with making them follow academics. We’re making them little robots.”

Not doing enough?

Some who signed the petition said a half day of school isn’t enough time for teachers to cover required materials, which may result in students falling behind their classmates. Jason Soderberg, who has a daughter and son in the school system, believes his son wasn’t adequately prepared for first grade after going through half day kindergarten.

“I don’t believe half-day kindergarten is enough for these kids, moving forward,” he said. “We’re not doing enough to educate our children with half-day kindergarten.”

Karen Blakeslee, a parent who teaches at Nathan Hale School in Meriden, agreed with Soderberg.

She said she knew her daughter was behind “because in first grade, she wasn’t reading or she had a difficult time reading, initially,” Blakeslee said. “If there was a full-day program, they could have targeted things she needed to work on and she might have been at an advantage.”

With the Common Core State Standards set to roll out for the next school year, some parents said teaching the required material in a half-day program would be difficult. The Common Core standards were adopted by the state Board of Education on July 7, 2010, and “establish what Connecticut’s public school students should know and be able to do as they progress” through the grades, according to the Department of Education website.

In addition, when the Smarter Balance Assessment — a computer-based test in which the difficulty changes depending on how a student answers — is put in effect during the 2014-15 school year, students will be tested from grades 3-8 and in grade 11. Fallon Wagner, a town resident and math facilitator in Meriden schools, said that if students have not been exposed to full-day kindergarten, they won’t be prepared for the new assessment.

“If they’re not getting rigorous curriculum early on, they won’t be prepared,” she said. “The kindergartners now will be the first to go through and take the assessment (in the third grade). And because they’re going through a rigorous curriculum, there won’t be any gaps for them.”

This year, Meriden schools made the transition from half day to full-day kindergarten, and both Wagner and Blakeslee said they have already seen the benefits, with students learning material they would typically learn a year later.

“Kids are capable of doing so much more than they used to,” Wagner said. “What kindergartners are doing today is what (teachers) used to be doing in first and second grade.”

The goal of the petition is to bring the discussion of a full day program to the school board, but McKay said a petition doesn’t have to be created for that to happen.

“I don’t need a list of signatures,” she said. “If a parent wants anything discussed, I would encourage them to come to any one of the three meetings during the month and talk to us.”