Batavia Schools Still Prefer Cutting Full-Day Kindergarten, School Board Takes Up Issue

Editor's note: The Batavia School Board on Nov. 15 ultimately decided to pass 3 separate motions involving a full-day kindergarten option and the specials. Full-day kindergarten might still be an option next year, but a final decision is pending. To read more about the Board's decision, click .

The Batavia School Board on Tues., Nov. 15 heard more about the impact of full-day vs. half-day kindergarten, and these findings will support dropping the full-day option in Batavia.

If School Board members vote to get rid of the full-day option, parents will have to look to child care and other programs in the area if they want their kindergarteners to have a full day of learning.

Batavia School district leaders will present kindergarten research to the School Board at their regular public meeting tonight. A vote is likely to happen as well for an official decision on the program. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. today, Tues. Nov. 15, in the , 335 W. Wilson St.

for kindergarteners in the 2012-13 school year. This tuition-based program, when combined with regular morning classes, is the only way a kindergartener can attend a full day of public school in Batavia.

Batavia Schools do offer a half-day kindergarten program to everyone—parents can opt to have their children in a morning-only session, or an afternoon-only session.

The district wants to create alternative programming for at-risk students in the place of the kindergarten enrichment program. They will present research to this effect, showing that at-risk students are outpaced in test score averages by typically developed students.

This proposed cut angers parents, who say a full-day option provides a better place for all children to develop socially and academically. to publicly support full-day kindergarten.

Even more parents have written the School Board to oppose the kindergarten cut, and to share the benefits that the full-day option had for their older children.

"I think there’s still a lot of interest, a lot of worry that there won't be full-day kindergarten next year," Parent Christy Kulczycki said. "I still have questions about how their new proposed program is going to work."

School District Answers 'Who's At Risk?' Question

Kulczycki last month asked how the Batavia Public Schools defines at-risk students. An "at-risk student" is someone who is more likely than his or her peers to have future academic failure.

The district provided the following criteria in the information for tonight's meeting. Those at at-risk might include students who:

• are eligible for special education
• have a home language other than English
• come from low-income families
• indicate through kindergarten screening to be significantly delayed in foundational literacy skills

The district will also look at student who:

• are homeless or have a homeless family
• have teen parents
• come from families where the parent(s) have not completed high school

The teachers mostly agreed that not all of the Batavia at-risk students' needs are being met. Even so, there were some who didn't appear to support the plan of dropping the full-day kindergarten option.

"Additional comments added to the focus group notes disagreed with this information and discussed some of the benefits for enrichment and extension available through the ASEP program," said a district memo about the research findings.

Money's Not The Issue?

Parents who want full-day kindergarten in Batavia Public Schools currently have to open their wallets to get it.

Families have to pay up to $250 a month to have their child in the after-school enrichment program. Parent Lynn Smola on Oct. 25 suggested that the district raise the tuition so the program can be maintained.

Board members did discuss the tuition issue, and this was the outcome, according to the unofficial meeting minutes:

"With the change in calculating the state aid formula and budget cuts, the program is no longer cost effective for the district. Parents currently pay $250 in tuition but that does not cover all the costs of the program."

The Specials Argument

Although the district's alternate at-risk programming is still in discussion, Kulczycki wonders if it truly can be cost neutral like leaders claim.

"There’s going to be work and resources involved to implement the (new) program," she said.

Kulczycki also wants to know if the at-risk students would receive specialized instruction in art, music and physical education under a new program. The district's answer to this could bring issues of fairness and equity up again.

Parents began to raise the issue of equity between the half-day kindergarteners and the kindergarteners who had half-day classes and the enrichment program.

Budget cuts forced the district to remove specialized instruction in music, art and P.E. from the half-day kindergarten students, but not the enrichment students.

After parents brought this issue up to the School Board, the and its actual effects on students.

Check batavia.patch.com after the meeting tonight for more details from the district's proposal and reaction to the School Board's vote, if one takes place.

For our last full story on this issue, click .