District 203 mulls all-day kindergarten

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Proposed elementary school attendance areas for Naperville School District 203. | Mike Solley ~ Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 23, 2012 8:24AM

All-day kindergarten, and its impact on school boundary changes, was at the center of conversation Tuesday in Naperville School District 203.

“There is a need for all-day kindergarten,” Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Jennifer Hester said before the School Board meeting Tuesday night.

Hester said that the Common Core Curriculum standards soon to be implemented demand more instruction time beginning in kindergarten.

The district currently offers a half-day kindergarten program, while 85 percent of Illinois school districts offer a full-day program.

“The difficulty is in providing in-depth learning in that two and one-half hour program,” Hester said.

Hester stressed that a crucial goal of all-day kindergarten is to reduce the number of first-grade students in need of intervention, which currently stands at 32 percent.

She said that only a small amount of research for all-day kindergarten existed, and it was inconclusive on its long-term effect on test scores, but all-day programs do seem to help students with social skills and the adjustment to school life.

District 203 Superintendent Mark Mitrovich agreed with Hester that the district needs all-day kindergarten.

“This gives us the flexibility to provide the best opportunity for our kids,” he said.

But providing that opportunity comes with a price.

For starters there are physical changes to schools. While four of the district’s 14 elementary schools are ready to accommodate all-day kindergarten, and four will be through a reduction in the number of sections in each grade, six of them will require either a multi-purpose room or a renovated or added classroom.

The one-time construction cost is about $6.9 million, which Mitrovich stressed would be paid for without borrowing.

Then there is a start-up cost of $505,600 and the annual operating costs of slightly under $2 million beginning in school year 2013-2014.

The district’s plans to alter school boundaries and shift about 1,200 students to new schools are directly tied to all- day kindergarten. The question of what happens to the district’s proposed boundary map if the board rejects all-day kindergarten is unknown.

But Mitrovich stressed that the Common Core Standards were a reality.

“The standards are the standards whether you’re there for a half-day or full-day,” he said.

When the presentation was made to the board Tuesday night, board member Dave Weeks pointed out that about 70 percent of district children were already reading at an acceptable level without all-day kindergarten, prompting applause from the audience.

“I feel like I’m being lobbied,” he said.

After several parents spoke in favor of all-day kindergarten, one saying “why wouldn’t we set up our children for success,” board member Susan Crotty pointed out that the residents she has heard from seem split on the idea.

But many district teachers spoke in favor of it at the meeting, including two first-grade teachers, one who said that kindergarten teachers in the district were “miracle workers” who needed more time with students, and another who said that the half-day program,“was always a challenge.”

Weeks still had doubts. He said he was worried that other programs might be cut to pay for all-day kindergarten.

Board member Jackie Romberg said that if the district had the capacity in every building, everyone would be for all-day kindergarten. She also noted that there wasn’t much appetite in the district to incur construction costs.

Board President Mike Jaensch said that the district’s current test scores had to be considered against the backdrop of a “mediocre state in a mediocre nation (educationally)” and that $2 million was a small price to pay to become competitive.

Crotty said she was in favor of reaching out to the community with a survey about the need for all-day kindergarten.

Mitrovich said the next step would be to evaluate costs and reconsider options for the all-day kindergarten proposal.