One year after the Hollister School District switched to
full-day kindergarten, local administrators and teachers are
calling the change an overall success.
Hollister – One year after the Hollister School District switched to full-day kindergarten, local administrators and teachers are calling the change an overall success.
The district in August 2006 switched its schools’ half-day kindergarten classes – lasting three-and-a-half hours – to full-day classes lasting six hours. Administrators are calling the move, which gives teachers more time with the students, an improvement.
Most of the district’s kindergarten teachers have advocated for the new schedule, though some have tempered their enthusiasm, saying the students should be weaned in to the longer days.
“At this time of year, up until about parent-teacher conference time in November, it is an extremely long day,” said Michal Query, a kindergarten teacher at Ladd Lane School. “It would be nice if we could wean the kids in to the longer day.”
The Hollister School District Board of Trustees voted in April 2006 to make the change. With an increasing emphasis on state standards at a younger age, there has been a continuing move nationwide to a full-day kindergarten structure.
“Statewide, there is a very welcome trend toward full-day kindergarten, and Hollister is keeping right up with this trend,” said San Benito County Office of Education Superintendent Tim Foley.
The number of schools providing full-day kindergarten rose from 17 percent to 50.8 percent nationwide between 1965 and 1998, according to the California Department of Education.
Hollister School District Superintendent Ron Crates said that while testing and state standards did play a role in the switch to full-day kindergarten, they were not the only reasons for the change.
There were two major reasons behind the switch to full-day kindergarten, Crates said. One related to keeping the children on task for a longer period of time and allowing them to be better prepared for elementary school, and the other was to create a more “family-friendly” schedule since more families in Hollister have both parents working full time.
“I did hear back from parents how pleased they were,” Crates said. “We’ve gotten really good responses.”
The move to full-day kindergarten was paired with a plan to keep each class at a ratio of 20 students per teacher in each class. Crates believes both have been positive moves for the district, he said.
He plans to keep the full-day, small kindergarten classes “no matter what the financial conditions are.”
The additional cost of the full-day kindergarten and maintaining only 20-student classes costs the district approximately $300,000 per year, Crates said.
Districts do not receive additional funds from the state for providing full-day kindergarten, according to the California Department of Education.
While nearly all feedback has been positive, Crates said he had heard from teachers who wanted the school year to start with the students at half days and to gradually move into full day. It’s something he would consider, he said.
Query, who started teaching kindergarten in 1969, is one of the teachers who said that while she likes the full-day kindergarten overall, she wishes there would be a gradual change.
For the five-year-olds, sitting in a classroom for six hours can be a daunting task, she said.
“They just get tired. They get antsy, and there’s a lot more rolling around on the floor and just verbalizing – ‘When is it time to go home?'” Query said.
But Query said despite this, she likes the new schedule, which allows her to spend more time with the children.
“It’s a much more relaxed atmosphere. We don’t have to cram everything into half a day,” she said.
Under the full-day schedule, the second half of the day is spent on “developmentally appropriate” tasks for the students’ ages and grade levels, Query said. This means their afternoons are spent doing hands-on science, playing with blocks and painting, among other creative tasks, she said.
Jamie Fowles, who started teaching at Cerra Vista last year, said although she has taught just the full-day kindergarten, in some ways it eases the stress of teaching.
“Having a full day makes it so much easier on our teachers,” Fowles said. “Before, all they could really teach was language arts and math, so that when (the students) go into first grade, they would have a background.”
