All-day kindergarten plan may fall victim to economy

The Hingham School Department says it can't cram everything that kindergarteners need to know into a 2 1/2 hour day. So starting next fall, the department wants to make all kindergarten classes 6 hours and 10 minutes long.

Full-day kindergarten was endorsed last month by the School Committee and still needs passage of a property-tax increase to fund the additional $352,408 cost. But the concept is opposed by one member who questioned both the cost and the underlying assumption that young children need a rigorous academic schedule.

"This recession is forcing us to rethink - getting us back to what's important," said that dissenter, Esther Healey, who had a child, niece, or nephew in every grade in the Hingham schools when she was elected to the School Committee four years ago.

"The origin of full-day kindergarten was to help rural and inner city children who were falling behind to catch up with their suburban counterparts. So does it make sense for Hingham?" Healey said.

"In the context of financial restraints, the basic role of the public schools, the lack of any supporting research of the lasting benefits, and my personal concern about the continued structuring of our young children's lives, I just can't support all-day kindergarten," she said.

Healey, however, is fighting a trend. The percentage of full-day kindergartens nationwide has jumped from 25 percent 30 years ago, to more than 60 percent.

Ten years ago, the Massachusetts Department of Education began giving money to start full-day kindergarten classes in poor districts with low test scores, because that was where children benefited most, according to department spokesman J.C. Considine.

And though a state report noted that "there are children for whom a full-day does not particularly increase the value of kindergarten - usually those from upper income groups," the governor has recommended, although not required, "universal and free full-day kindergarten" by next fiscal year, Considine said.

Until a recent budget freeze, the state was giving millions in grants even to affluent communities for the classes as "an investment in the future," he said

Hingham had hoped to get some of that state money, according to Superintendent Dorothy Galo, and had designed the elementary school now under construction with the assumption that full-day kindergarten would start next fall.

School administrators want a budget override of $1.6 million to open the new school, and another $352,408 for the extra teachers and aides needed for 17 classes of all-day kindergarten. The School Committee has yet to weigh in, and Spring Town Meeting will make a final call on that.

Hingham currently has 14 half-day kindergarten classes and two full-day ones that include 21 special-needs students and 17 without special needs who pay a $2,500 annual fee. Several private schools in town also offer full-day kindergarten.

Galo said she recognizes that the economic reality may make it hard to sell the idea this year. "But we think the community deserves to know what we need," she said. "We've built the new school, done the renovations [at other elementary schools] so [full-day kindergarten] could happen. It would be a missed opportunity not to do it this [coming] year.

"I know there are people in the community who say, 'Oh, Dot, it's just child care,' " Galo said. "If I thought it was just child care, I'd be proposing child care at a much lower cost. I really feel it's the best thing educationally. . . In two hours and 35 minutes - by the time you have their boots off and story time and snack - we simply can't do the curriculum we need."

The curriculum is based on the state's guidelines, and assumes kindergarteners will be ready to read and do basic math by June.

The pressure to achieve that goal comes, in part, from a change in educational philosophy, said Assistant Superintendent Ellen Keane. The earlier belief that students are ready for academic rigor at different times has been replaced by the idea that students who are behind in kindergarten need remedial help immediately, she said.

"Poor readers continue to be poor readers. We used to wait until third or fourth grade [to give remedial help]. Research now shows that's too long to wait."

Both Galo and Keane say lengthening the day will make kindergarten less stressful for children, by giving teachers more time to pursue academics and also allow for less formal learning. Former longtime Hingham kindergarten teachers Sharyn Burden and Avis Goldstein say they support a full-day program for that reason, so teachers can restore such important things as art, music, cooking, and play to an increasingly academic day.

"It's essential for the well-being of our children so they can have the academics, and have the time to explore their creativity and to develop their love of learning - because right now it's impossible to have it all and the only thing that's happening, for the most part, is academics," Goldstein said.

But some parents, including Healey, who has five children aged 15 to 30, doubt the wisdom of making all kindergarteners spend more than six hours a day in school.

"I understand that people want what's best for their child, but I just don't know that what's best has to come in the form of some kind of structured education," Healey said. "Kids can be so imaginative, so inventive. They just need to be given time to be a child."

"I'm getting positive feedback," Healey said of her opposition to the plan.

"It comes in the weirdest places. People tap me on the shoulder in church; someone stopped me in the dog park. I've gotten letters and calls, and a classmate from high school who moved back to town e-mailed me. People want to support education . . . It's very difficult for them to say 'no.' I guess I've given a voice to that 'no.' "