Poland board approves all-day kindergarten

An all-day program allows teachers more time to work with pupils.

By DENISE DICK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

POLAND — Beginning next school year, Poland schools will provide all-day kindergarten, and it’s welcome news to some parents.

The school board approved the change from half-day to full-day kindergarten at a meeting this week. The move puts Poland in line with most of the districts in Mahoning County. Only Canfield and Lowellville remain with half-day programs.

“With the amount of people who have both people working and with single parents, they want all-day kindergarten,” Superintendent Dr. Robert Zorn said.

Sarah Orr, president of the PTO at North Elementary, supports the change.

“I just think when you look at all of the other districts — Struthers has all-day kindergarten, Boardman has all-day kindergarten — I just can’t believe our kids are benefiting in 21⁄2 hours the way that other kids are in a full day,” Orr said.

Her daughter is in kindergarten this year so the all-day change won’t affect her, but Orr said she hears from other PTO members that they want an all-day program too.

The issue was studied by the district’s curriculum council, consisting of elementary school principals, teachers, PTA representatives and parents, which recommended the change, Zorn said.

The district’s sticking with a half-day program up to this point was partially financial. Though the state provides reimbursement for all-day programs for districts considered economically disadvantaged, no such reimbursement is provided for districts such as Poland.

Earlier this year, though, the district believed a reimbursement was forthcoming for all districts. That ended up not happening, but Zorn said the district is hopeful that change will occur for the following school year.

Karla Carruthers, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Education, said the state board of education has recommended reimbursement for all districts for all-day kindergarten, but it’s never been acted upon.

The change will also allow Poland to keep up with most of the other Mahoning County districts, the superintendent said. “In the old days, kindergarten was a socialization program, but now most kids coming in have been in some kind of preschool,” Zorn said.

The extended session will provide teachers with more instructional time with their pupils.

Carmella Smallhoover, principal of Union Elementary, said she’s already received calls from parents in favor of the change.

“One mother called and said, ‘You just made my day,’” the principal said. The woman’s child will enter kindergarten next school year.

Smallhoover taught kindergarten for 20 years and has seen the curriculum change from a program geared at developing a child’s socialization and coordination to one where they learn reading basics as mandated by state law.

With only a half-day, teachers have had to reduce the time they spend working with children’s developmental, socialization and coordination skills to focus on the state requirements.

Despite the change in curriculum, though, the physiology of 5-year-olds hasn’t changed, Smallhoover said. Children need both the developmental skills and the skills required by the state.

“Going to full-day kindergarten allows them the best of both worlds,” she said.

State law doesn’t require parents to enroll their children in a full-day program, but Zorn believes children whose parents send them for only a half-day when their peers get a full-day will be academically disadvantaged.

The change will mean the district must hire three more teachers and make another who teaches only half-day kindergarten full time.

A beginning teacher in the district will earn $32,604 for the 2008 to 2009 school year. That would put the cost of three new teachers at about $97,812 plus the cost of making a half-day teacher full-time. That figure wasn’t available.

Zorn said that those costs will be offset in part by eliminating bus routes that served only half-day kindergarten pupils as well as half-day kindergarten aides.

The change also means some minor construction at Union Elementary. The school board offices will move out of that building and into Poland Seminary High School to make room for kindergarten classrooms. Zorn estimated the cost of work at the high school at about $50,000. He said the work at Union will be minimum but couldn’t put a price on the work at Union.