NORWAY – A pilot program for all-day kindergarten began this week at Oxford Elementary School, marking SAD 17’s foray into a program that has been achieving success elsewhere in the state, district officials said Monday.
Alan Struck, principal of Oxford Elementary, told SAD 17 board members at their regular meeting that initial indicators of the pilot program are encouraging. “If (Monday) was any indicator, it is going to be a lot of fun,” he said. “The literacy and math blocks meshed very nicely. The (kindergartners) loved it. This made them big kids.”
The pilot program will run until the end of the academic year. All 44 kindergarten students at Oxford Elementary are attending school five days per week. Sixty-five other elementary schools in Maine already have all-day kindergarten programs.
The program divides the Oxford students into two classes of 22 students each, allowing the three kindergarten teachers to give students more focused and individual attention, Superintendent Mark Eastman said.
One of the teachers is a Title I position, which is federally funded and mandated to instruct only students who meet federal eligibility guidelines for supplemental help with literacy. Eastman said the Title I teacher is instructing those students in blocks during the day and giving them supportive instruction when they are with the rest of the class.
“When she pulls them out, she has them in a literacy block. When they are in the (full) classroom, she can work with them in a supportive way,” he said.
Struck said the all-day kindergarten program has been under consideration for several years, and other elementary schools in the state that already have it in place have found it successful in terms of student achievement. “They have recommended it to us,” he said.
Oxford Elementary was chosen for the pilot program because of its kindergarten enrollment size and the number of teachers as well as available space, he said.
Oxford kindergarten students receive a literacy block in the morning along with science and social studies instruction. In the afternoon there is a second literacy block and a math block.
Struck said questionnaires will be sent to parents of kindergarten students during the school year to help measure how the students are reacting to the all-day program. Testing data will be studied in either April or May to also help determine the program’s success.
Eastman said the program could be expanded to other SAD 17 schools. “If we see overall academic growth among all students, I will talk to the board about extending it to all the schools,” he said.
The impetus behind the pilot program was a cultural shift toward a more academic-oriented environment in kindergarten, Eastman said. “We have gone from a social, game-play culture to a very solid academic focus,” he said.
In addition, federal and state laws that measure academic achievement, including the federal No Child Left Behind Act, have further heightened the necessity to focus students on academics at the earliest ages. “We have to have achievement of standards at every level,” he said.
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