Kinder students are a hot commodity for schools

Published 3:00 pm Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Even with tuition, full-day kindergarten in local public schools is hugely popular.

For the first time, more island parents are choosing to send their children to full-day, tuition-based kindergarten in the Bainbridge Island School District, reflecting a trend nationwide.

“The scale seems to have tipped,” said school district administrator Bruce Colley, noting that registration for the $2,700 full-day program has eclipsed the free half-day program for the first time since the full-day option was offered four years ago.

Kindergarten is not mandatory in Washington state, which funds half-day programs statewide.

About 60 school districts in the state, including Bainbridge Island, now offer full-day programs as well, although they have had to fund them independently.

The kindergarten tuition for the 2005-2006 school year on Bainbridge is comparable to tuition charged in other public school systems.

“Kindergarten today is quite different from the kindergarten of the past,” said Colley, an educator for 30 years. “The curriculum is more in-depth than ever before.”

Full-day kindergarten is not for every family, but it is growing in popularity as parents weigh the options of how to provide academic enrichment to their children prior to first grade, school officials say.

“Full-day kindergarten does provide time for additional practice of skills and socialization activities,” said Ordway School Principal Glen Robbins. “It also provides increased opportunities to take part in art, music and PE, and it tends to make the transition to first grade easier.

“But do all kids need that? No. It’s really the parent’s choice. But it’s nice to be able to offer families these options, based on their needs and desires.”

Based on pre-registration for the 2005-2006 school year, the district plans to offer a total of six full-day and four half-day kindergarten classes this fall at the island’s three public elementary schools.

On Bainbridge Island and elsewhere in the country, parents in public schools are choosing the full-day option for a number of social, economic and educational reasons, among them:

• Readiness. Most children today have attended pre-school, and they are considered more prepared for a full day of learning.

• Scheduling. For working parents, taking part in full-day kindergarten is often less costly and complicated than arranging for the transition to child-care in the middle of the day.

• Academics and socialization. Full-day kindergarten gives children more time to learn skills needed for first grade.

“We knew when the program began that it would be popular with parents,” Colley said. “Many children were already doing a full day, they were just doing it someplace else.”

Parents say the tuition is well worth it.

“We love the full-day kindergarten program,” said Wendy Orville, whose daughter Maya Nathan is a student at Blakely Elementary School. “The tuition feels very reasonable given the quality and the breadth of the program.

“My daughter Maya has an extraordinary teacher, Jan Colby, who makes learning so joyful and exciting. We feel very lucky.”

Blaine Rogers and his wife Sundance have enrolled two children, Emily and Eli, in the full-day program at Blakely School and lauded the pace of the longer day.

“There is so much they want to do in kindergarten, and the half-day just seemed so short,” Blaine Rogers said. “After attending preschool, they were ready. The transition to a full day can be a little hard at first, but it didn’t take but a week to adjust to the schedule.”

With so much more emphasis on academic mastery and standardized testing, the longer day is also praised by public schools teachers as a way to give kindergartners ample time to practice their new skills.

“It was challenging to try and do everything the state has asked us to do in the shorter, two-and-a-half hour day,” said Marcia Brown, who now teaches full-day kindergarten at Wilkes Elementary School.

“We are able to go more in-depth with reading, with writing, and with letter recognition. And there’s so much more bonding that goes on in the full day. You really get to know the children better.”