LOVELL – Kindergartners attending New Suncook Elementary School won’t be boarding any early buses or heading home after a half day of classes when school starts Sept. 7.

Like other elementary schools in SAD 72, New Suncook is switching to an all-day kindergarten program this year.

“The fact is, there are a lot of 5-year-olds that go home that are ready to go the full boat,” Principal Gary MacDonald said Wednesday.

The all-day kindergarten program is the result of several months of research by the district’s Early Childhood Curriculum Committee, MacDonald said. The extended kindergarten times are popular nationwide, and about 55 percent of kindergartens in Maine now adhere to the full-day schedule, he said.

Lauren Potta, a kindergarten and first grade teacher at New Suncook, was a member of the Early Childhood Curriculum Committee. She left a prepared statement with MacDonald on Wednesday.

The curriculum committee found that the biggest challenge facing early childhood teachers in the region was time, she said.

“It is difficult to find the time in a short three-hour day to meet the diverse needs of all kindergarten students,” Potta wrote. “We need more time to appropriately support children’s emerging literacy and math skills as well as their social, emotional and physical development.”

The shift to an all-day kindergarten program was therefore a natural one, she said.

Most parents have been supportive of the change, MacDonald said. Schools in the district are prepared to work with parents who want half-day programs for their kindergartners, he said, but so far there haven’t yet been any such requests.

MacDonald said kindergartners will not be pushed to do first-grade level work, but will simply have more time for activities like reading and math at their own level.

New kindergarten and first-grade teacher Carol Toppe was on Wednesday busy preparing her classroom for incoming students.

“I don’t see it as a challenge,” she said of the full-day kindergarten. “I think, if anything, it’s a benefit for the kindergartners.”

Not only will there be more time for elementary academics, but the kids also “will get more time with their friends, more time with their peers,” she said.

The program may help parents as well, Toppe noted. “A lot of parents work full days and to have their kids going to school full days is sometimes a benefit.”