No Full-Day Kindergarten in Farmington Anytime Soon

After its second discussion exploring the possibility of full-day kindergarten in Farmington, the Board of Education decided to take the issue off the table and not revisit it for a year or more.

The board began its discussion of full-day kindergarten Oct. 1 at the superintendent’s recommendation, due to the coming implementation of the Common Core State Standards and as many nearby districts have made or considered the switch.

But the costs outweigh the benefits, board members decided, with little discussion after Superintendent Kathleen Greider had presented additional information requested by board members.

First, additional fiscal costs of extending kindergartners’ day until 3:15 would total $667,945 by administrators’ projections. That includes an additional 6.5 kindergarten teachers, benefits, the cost to outfit the additional classrooms with furniture, supplies and technology, paraprofessionals and additional bus routes.

The district could possibly face other costs, too. The district’s elementary school buildings are close to reaching their maximum capacity now and adding seven classrooms across the schools would absorb limited space.

That would mean that the superintendent could be limited in creating new classes because the schools didn’t have a free classroom. And that could mean some increase in class sizes.

“By increasing the number of classrooms we’re utilizing, we lose the flexibility to add classes due to class size,” Greider explained. “So there is the potential of increased class size [in grades] k through 4.”

The possibility of larger class sizes seemed to be a large disincentive for several school board members but some mentioned that Farmington’s already high test scores show all-day kindergarten is not necessary now.

That was the argument Greider ultimately made in summarizing the discussion.

At the end of last year, 89 percent of kindergartners met grade-level standards in reading, 89 percent in math and 87 percent in writing.

“Students who do not meet standards are offered interventions and we do offer the EXCL option to extend the day,” Greider said.

She also said that while research showed students in an all-day kindergarten program made clear and significant gains academically, socially and behaviorally, many of those gains apply to low-income students. Greider said that no clear research exists to show long-term gains as a result of all-day kindergarten.

And while achievement data on Farmington kindergartners shows success, the data is a year old and measured according to district standards – not the coming Common Core State Standards, which are much more rigorous. Kindergartners will be tested against those criteria at the end of this year, prompting Greider to say and board members to agree, that the board should wait to look at new data.

Meredith Trimble, however, said she’d like to see the board monitor the success of Simsbury (which just implemented full-day kindergarten) and of Farmington students as the Common Core is rolled out.