Adding 30 minutes to kindergarten Adding 30 minutes to kindergarten (April 20, 2005)

** Menlo Park school board approves 4.2-hour kindergarten.

By Marjorie Mader

Almanac Staff Writer

Kindergartners at Menlo Park's Laurel and Oak Knoll schools will have 30 minutes more of kindergarten per day and possibly smaller classes of 20 or fewer when school opens August 25.

Superintendent Ken Ranella said he would move right away to implement the state's Class Size Reduction Program next fall in kindergarten, enabling classes of 20 or fewer students instead of the present average of 24.

The district would gain $272,800 in state revenue to defray the cost of hiring more kindergarten teachers and moving two portable classrooms to the Laurel campus and possibly one to Oak Knoll.

The Menlo Park district has taken advantage of the state program to lower class sizes in grades 1-3 since shortly after the inception of the state program in the 1996-97 school year.
Longer day

The district's new kindergarten standards -- unanimously adopted by trustees at their April 13 meeting -- require that all kindergartners meet the state's standard of 45,000 instructional minutes per year, an average of 250 minutes (or 4.2 hours) per day for the 180-day school year. That works out to be an additional 30 minutes per day on average.

Superintendent Ranella said educational studies show that additional instructional minutes contribute to the academic achievement of most kindergarten students. The trend nationwide is to a longer kindergarten day, he said.

His recommendation also has a provision for full-day kindergartens at either school if parents voluntarily enroll their students and teachers volunteer to teach. The state guidelines call for heterogeneous groupings of children in this voluntary Early Primary Program. Two full-day kindergartens were piloted this year at Oak Knoll.

How the extra 30 minutes will be incorporated into the split "early-bird, late-bird" schedule at Laurel and the extended half-day program at Oak Knoll is up to the kindergarten teams and principals at both schools, according to the superintendent's recommendation that built in some flexibility for options.

Parents at both schools have expressed strong support for the kindergarten programs and teachers. Parents said they especially valued the time that small groups of children had with a teacher under both the Laurel and Oak Knoll programs.

The district's year-long kindergarten study appeared to conclude that there isn't "one best practice'' for kindergarten. It recognized that the Menlo Park teachers had developed quality instructional programs at both sites to best meet the needs of students within their communities.

"Ken's recommendations virtually support the consensus" of parents and teachers expressed at the last meeting, said Trustee Bruce Ives.
E-mail Marjorie Mader at mmader@AlmanacNews.com

E-mail a friend a link to this story.