cur-mud-geon:
anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
My true curmudgeonly nature is about to be re-exposed. Is there a space problem in our Germantown Schools or is there a full-day kindergarten problem? If we had no full-day program, we would have no issues with a lottery, and I doubt any issues with space.
I can actually remember some of my year in kindergarten. I remember milk with graham crackers, lying on a rug for the requisite nap, sandboxes, recesses, stories being read to me and being scolded if I didn’t play well with others. I obviously had no choice but to attend half-day kindergarten. It did help greatly in my socialization…although you could argue that I need remedial help.
I may be a bit warped, but I doubt that can be assessed as the fault of having had only a half-day in kindergarten at the age of five.
Full-day kindergarten strikes me as a panacea for parents since day care rates in Germantown for half-days at a local day care center are shown at $132.50 per week. At 36 weeks of school, that has a cost of $4,770 per kindergarten child.
If my children were of kindergarten age, and if both I and my wife worked outside the home, you can bet I’d be all in favor of saving nearly $5,000 per year on day care costs while my child was safely engaged inside the kindergarten classroom.
Does a full-day actually benefit the child more than a half-day? I seriously doubt that there is any measurable favorable impact. The article in the current Germantown Now print edition mentions that, “the curriculum is the same in both half-day and full-day” according to Cynthia Coley, Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the Germantown District. She went on to say, “…the obvious advantage of full-day is that they have a longer time to investigate and explore those concepts”.
I understand that the student has a longer time to investigate and explore, but I don’t think the attention span of the average five-year old really permits their attention over such a time span.
Does full-day kindergarten cost the taxpayer more money than half-day. The obvious answer is yes. I don’t know if the state gives districts more for a full-day student than a half-day student. I would not be surprised if that were the case. I do know that teachers have either been stretched to cover these hours or that teachers have been added to cover these hours, or a combination of both. I do know that there is some operational cost impact.
No matter the answers to these hypotheticals; full-day kindergarten costs more; full-day students’ parents benefit more; the taxpayers suffer more. Why are we tasked to help offset day care costs for parents?
