Sept. 01--Cecilia Mata said she's thrilled her daughter, Sofia, is one of the first full-day kindergarten students at Waukegan Community Unit School District 60.
"I think the extra time will be helpful for learning, and the teacher said they'll have music and gym, things they wouldn't have time for if it was half day," Mata said.
Sofia, 5, who said her favorite thing about school so far is recess, is a student at Glenwood Elementary School, one of five elementary schools where District 60 is piloting full-day kindergarten this year.
At Carman-Buckner, Glen Flora, Glenwood, Hyde Park and H.R. McCall schools, 17 classes of kindergarten students -- including 167 English-only students and 199 dual-language students -- will get an extra three-and-a-half hours of instruction each day.
The extra time means teachers don't have to "cram a full day into two-and-a-half hours," Amanda Patti, associate superintendent of school leadership and development, said at a school board meeting last week.
Oscar Moreno also likes the pilot program -- he just wishes his son Angel Olivan, a kindergarten student at half day-only John S. Clark Elementary School, wasn't left out. Angel can count to 100, tell time and is pretty good with the alphabet, said Moreno, who thinks his son, born in November and therefore older than some classmates, would have benefited from more class time at an earlier age.
While the state requires schools that offer full-day kindergarten also offer a half-day option, there's nothing that says a district offering full-day kindergarten to some students must make it available to all, said Matthew Vanover, Illinois State Board of Education spokesman.
Patti said the district couldn't afford to add full-day kindergarten at all schools at once, which would have required hiring additional teachers.
Federal grants are paying for Waukegan's pilot program and the district only had enough funding to offer the option at five schools, selected based on factors including whether they had enough classroom space to handle longer kindergarten hours and academic performance, Patti said.
Starting at five schools also effectively creates an experiment letting the district test how effective the extra class time is before committing to offering it at all schools.
"We also do want to compare performance at our full-day sites to ensure it is a program that is working to improve student learning," Patti said.
Kindergarten students take reading and math assessments three times a year, and district officials will compare improvements in letter naming fluency, letter sound fluency and reading growth, among other skills, between full- and half-day students, Patti said at a school board meeting last week. The district will have an early idea of the impact of extended kindergarten after the second round of tests in December, she said.
A few parents of students whose home schools weren't selected for the pilot have requested to transfer to a different school but the district is waiting until after Labor Day to decide whether to grant those requests in case there are students registering late, said district spokesman Nick Alajakis.
Moreno said he just hopes the pilot program expands to all schools in time for Angel's younger brother, a preschooler.
"We do what we can at home, but more school would help a lot," Moreno said.
lzumbach@tribpub.com
