Yorktown School District Considers Full-Day Kindergarten

Yorktown Central School District officials are revisiting the idea of full-day kindergarten and are hoping to implement the program for the next school year, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ralph Napolitano said at a recent school board meeting. 

"What's important to us is that the community embraces it and they recognize there is a value here," Napolitano said. 

Yorktown operates a half-day kindergarten and the idea to implement the full-day program has been discussed for years. But when it was last proposed in 2006, the public voted it down because of financial reasons. 

Expenses would have included a physical expansion of the primary buildings and additional personnel to provide the full-day experience, Napolitano said. 

This time around, there have been several significant changes and there is an opportunity to implement the program.

"Our population has decreased, allowing for more usable space within our current buildings," he said. "We do not believe there would be any additional monies that would be needed to expand to allow this program to take place."

In addition, the common core curriculum has increased which had led to the increased amount of work that is required for elementary school students. 

"With a half-day program I think what our kindergarten teachers try to do is cram in as much work as they can in the short amount of time that they have with the children," Napolitano said. "Then our first and second grade teachers moving forward try to play a lot of catch up to ensure the students are exactly where they need to be by the time they get to the third grade and start taking their first group of rigorous assessments that are awaiting for them."

Judy Giannelli, a kindergarten teacher for the last 24 years, said a full-day kindergarten program is needed and she was "thrilled to hear" it was going to be discussed and reviewed.

"I am somewhat speechless and a little bit emotional," Giannelli told school officials last week immediately after the presentation. "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish I had this much more time with my children."

Since 2006 – when the idea was last introduced – the requirements have been growing and Giannelli wishes there was more she could do with her students, but she is limited with time.

"I'd really like to have as much time as everyone else does in this district," she said. "It's overwhelming and I have to pick and choose very carefully what I'm able to teach, how long I'm going to teach it."

Napolitano said he and a few other school officials, including Assistant Superintendent of Business Tom Cole and Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Florence O'Connor, had discussed the possibility of full-day kindergarten. 

"At the meeting we decided to outline the steps that we needed to follow that then we will incorporate into a report that we would present," Napolitano said. 

Officials will explore the potential additional costs of building, personnel and transportation. They will also look at the effects on the community and the economic effects on homeowners. They plan on speaking with realtors who could give them more insight on how full-day kindergarten would counterbalance some of the initial costs. Napolitano said the district also intends to explore state aid that would help them implement the full-day program.

Cole said district officials will receive a new demographics report that would be "far more in-depth" than what they've looked at before.

"We need some idea of how many students would be migrating home from a private setting currently for full-day kindergarten," Cole said. "We also need to know how many new families will be enticed to our community for that program itself."

He said that would be the most critical piece of information in the whole process because the number of students would dictate the number of sections, the sections will dictate the number of rooms, the rooms will dictate the number of teachers and so forth.

Napolitano said neighboring school districts have added full-day programs even though they are not required by the state. 

Yorktown school board members said they want to hear from community members and will "keep the conversation alive" and discuss again. 

What do you think of full-day kindergarten? Should Yorktown implement it? Why/why not? Tell us in the comments section below.