From Superintendent David Fleishman:
December 11, 2018
Dear Newton Community,
I am very excited to announce that all Newton elementary schools will offer full day kindergarten (FDK) in the ’19-‘20 school year. We believe this change has tremendous benefits for both students and families and will provide the opportunity to improve our already strong kindergarten program.
Beginning in September, all kindergarten students will follow the same schedule as other elementary students in grades 1 to 5. We expect this will make scheduling more manageable and predictable for all families in our district.
You can be assured that our elementary schools will continue to focus the kindergarten experience on supporting both the academic and social and emotional needs of students. The expanded time will provide greater opportunities for children to develop their social and emotional skills through a range of learning experiences. We will also maintain our commitment to small group instruction with a full-time teaching assistant in each kindergarten classroom to support both the teacher and students.
We will be communicating more specific information to incoming kindergarten families in the coming days as well as at the kindergarten orientation for families in February. You can visit our kindergarten registration website where more information will be posted as it becomes available.
Finally, I am grateful to Mayor Fuller for providing additional funding to our system in support of FDK and to the Newton Teachers Association for their commitment to making this change possible. Many people have been working on this initiative for several years and we are excited for its implementation in September.
Sincerely,
David Fleishman
Congratulations to Mayor Fuller and the School Committee for making this happen!
I was very happy to hear this. More important than high school start times in my opinion.
Newtoner – Do you have a high school student? Both are important. I have no doubt my daughter’s grades are suffering because she is only half awake in the morning. Fortunately, she finished growing before high school, because sleep impacts height too.
This should reduce Kindergarten busing costs too!
Great, now do later start times for High School and get rid of early release entirely.
@Lucia: I do, and I’m fine with the current start time.
Full day kindergarten is great because it aligns Newton with its progressive neighbors in terms of investment in public education. It’s good for everyone, including parents of older children. I know it’s early to talk about this, but we should strive to offer public pre-K like Boston and Cambridge, at least partially.
I served on the FDK task force when Jim Marini was interim superintendent. This has been a real lesson in patience and persistence for those of us who have advocated for this change for more than a decade. I’m grateful to Mayor Fuller for pledging the resources to make this happen.
@Newtoner, NPS does have an early childhood program, just not a full day one. A PK program like Cambridge or Boston would require much more classroom space than we currently have.
Addendum to my above comment: Thanks also to David Fleishman and the School Department for making this happen.
Thank you Margaret Albright and Emily Norton for advocating and being persistent in pushing for Full-Day K as well as the Mayor and the Superintendent for finally making it a reality.
Thank you Amy for the shoutout. Margaret and I started advocating for FDK when my youngest was an infant and he is now in fifth grade. While it’s too late for him this will benefit incoming kindergartners and generations of future Newton students. Bravo to Mayor Fuller, the School Committee & the Superintendent for getting it done.
Which part of the budget was sacrificed to fund this? Genuinely curious…
Thankful to finally have full day kindergarten in Newton. Congrats and thank you to all of those who helped make this possible, especially the school committee, mayor, our administration, and our teachers.
Congratulations Emily, Margaret and Super Fleischman. A special shoutout to the Mayor. It proves that having a Mayor who is concerned about local issues is key to getting things accomplished in this city.
@Newtoner said
“Full day kindergarten is great because it aligns Newton with its progressive neighbors in terms of investment in public education.”
I believe the existing kindergarten model is much more progressive than the model we’re adopting.
A typical public elementary school week in Mass. is 30 hours, 25 hours of instruction and an hour a day for lunch/recess. Our kindergarteners presently are in school 25 hours / week. When one half of the class goes home early 2 days a week (five hours total), the other half gets to be in a very small class and get much more focused attention from the teacher. This is a unique and progressive arrangement. In other schools systems, “no full day K” means 12.5 hour a week, clearly not ideal.
I realize that the new model will put classroom aids into the K classes to allow the teacher to focus with small groups. But the noise and distraction with the full class present is not ideal.
I understand that 5 hours / week of childcare is not nothing to many families. I would have preferred to put the classroom aids budget toward addressing the deficiencies in our after school programs.
Rhanna, as Margaret so nicely puts it, NPS strives to provide an educational experience including both “equity and excellence for all our students.” Your saying, “I understand 5 hours/week of childcare is not nothing,” followed by where you would prefer the money be spent, means you either you don’t understand or don’t care about the inequity inherent in the program now.
Our after school programs are currently run by 14 independent non-profits. And in most school districts, including Boston, after school programs are run by independent organizations, mainly the YMCA of Greater Boston and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Boston.
Newton’s after school programs do not have the capacity to serve every child. The regulations of the Dept. of Early Education and Care apply to school-age after school programs and establish child/adult ratios, space requirements and a number of health and safety requirements.
I recall data from a few years ago which indicated that 70% of children over the age of six in Newton have both parents in the workforce. And while many children have access to our after school programs, many more do not leaving our youngest learners with a patchwork of services at 12:30 three days a week.
I certainly view access by all our youngest students to a high-quality full-day provides what NPS is striving for – equity and excellence for all our students.
It’s great to see this get done, albeit a decade or two later than it should have been.
Emily’s advocacy for FDK was one of the first things I learned about when I arrived in Newton, big kudos to her for being a strong, consistent voice on the issue.
Also great to see Fuller taking care of this issue, it’s far overdue.
Thank you Paul! And thank you Margaret for your excellent points. My very first blog post for my schools blog was about former Newton North Principal Jennifer Price telling the School Committee that we would be better off investing on students in the early grades rather than trying to catch them up with remedial classes in high school – and finally we will have a chance to do that, with Full Day Kindergarten. (My blog also had this page about FDK, this was posted in 2012)
Emily
Can you speak about how this affects the city budget?
Something got cut/increasee revenue. What was it? Thanks
Bugek,
Remember that the teachers are already there full-time. So, half the students go and half stay, and then the next day, the students, who left early, stay for the full day.
The only budget increase need should be for aids, who will now have to stay full time with certain students. In contrast, bus expenses should be reduced with fewer trips (which by the way are quite high so the savings should be significant.)
Overall, FDK should also save budget expenses for remedial needs for older kids. So in the long run, FDK should save money for the school department.
Why this took so long to implement is beyond comprehension.
Soccermom,
If it was as simple as you described then the education board should all be fired for incompetence… we must be missing something
Marti, I won’t bother detailing all of the ways I’ve volunteered my time to address issues of inequity in the NPS. Among other things I served on the NPS equity committee. So I’m sorry if my point wasn’t clear.
My point is: the model we have today is superior to what we’re about to adopt. It benefits all children equally across the income spectrum. I wish we could have instead addressed the issues (including inequities) with our after-school (childcare) programs, so that families who are burdened by the five hours a week of additional childcare could get it free or affordably. Because all families are losing something important with the new model.
Rhanna, my point was addressed by Margaret Albright “Newton’s after school programs do not have the capacity to serve every child. The regulations of the Dept. of Early Education and Care apply to school-age after school programs and establish child/adult ratios, space requirements and a number of health and safety requirements.” $1 million wouldn’t increase capacity or address the issues so that all children could be enrolled in a free or affordable after-school-programs.
I applaud the change. The amount of talk and lack of action on this has been an eye opener over the years. I love the after school programs in Newton (Cabot has an amazing one that has really helped my kids over the years) but the kindergarten half days was an unbelievable fact of living in Newton. I appreciate the smaller classroom benefit, but it only came twice a week. For kids that struggle or have learning issues, I think consistent school and teacher hours are more important. If we need more one on one, smaller learning groups and teacher aids can help.
I give huge kudos to the mayor, the superintendent and the school committee for getting it done. And a special shout-out to the kindergarten teachers. I’m not sure if they had the right to reject the change, but I appreciate that they didn’t block it.
Now let’s fix the start times. And the special education program.
fyi. the cost was approx. 1.3 million a year. There’s probably enough fluff in the budget to get this without too much sacrifice..
from patch article:
https://patch.com/massachusetts/newton/newton-get-full-day-kindergarten-2019
I realize this is done and it’s time to move on. I just wish the dialogue about this over recent years had been honest. All the talk about studies that show the benefits of full-day kindergarten was disingenuous. We already have full-day kindergarten in Newton, and no studies compare our superior model to typical full-day kindergarten. Our model was designed to give our k students *more* that a typical full-day k program.
Emily Norton acknowledged that we have full-day k on her blog years ago:
“According to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ definition of “full day”, Newton meets the definition because kindergartners go to school at least 850 hours per school year. ” http://www.greatnewtonschools.org/full-day-kindergarten.html
Our kindergartners are in school 900 hours per year. The 5 hours per week (out of 30) they leave early is in exchange for something incredibly valuable. Ask any Newton kindergarten teacher what they think of this change.
What this is really about is 5 hours per week of child care which creates a burden for a portion of our families. That’s an important concern. But if we’d framed the discussion honestly, we may have come up with a better solution, obvious challenges notwithstanding. Where there’s a will there’s usually a way.
Rhanna:
I see your point. But I think you are quick to sacrifice consistent school time in favor of smaller/more focused instruction.
I recognize the trade-off. But why not address it by pushing NPS to have smaller classrooms? More teacher aids? More co-taught classrooms?
I’m a little worried about where the funds will come from. I’ve been very disappointed with the Newton school system. Not the teachers, I’ve generally found them to be excellent and dedicated, with a few rare exceptions. And the after school programs have made a huge difference in my kids’ lives.
I’ve certainly noticed that there is a trend towards new hires, which means more experienced teachers are leaving the system or retiring. I know several people who have had new hires/brand new teachers for multiple years of elementary school. This level of inexperience, combined with larger classrooms in many schools, has led to some real negative outcomes.
For students that are thriving and above grade level, they quickly adjust, even to a new teacher with no experience. For students with severe issues/IEPs/in-school aids, services exist. But if your child struggles or needs extra help and is not within the clear disability window that seems to change from school to school, there just isn’t the resources to provide it. The school system has no interest in potential or long term outcomes for kids like these. Instead, the focus is on teaching to the bare minimum of nationwide benchmarks, allocating scarce special education resources instead of advocating for additional resources to service the needs, and largely pushing educational tasks and costs onto parents. And the levels of bureaucratic stalling and delay when the resources available don’t meet the needs of your child are kafkaesque…
A discussion for another thread perhaps. But much work remains to be done. And the funding sources are clearly limited.
Rhanna’s statement “Our model was designed to give our k students *more* that a typical full-day k program” is not accurate. Our model was designed to give Kindergarten teachers a full time salary, as I explained in this op-ed from 2012.
Fig, I share your class size concerns wholeheartedly. I’ve advocated for class size to be a priority since my older child was in a K class of 24. Those 5 hours a week with 12 kids were invaluable. We’ve made progress since then, but we could do better. We all know that when the budget gets tight, classroom aides are among the first things to be cut. And in 5-10 years when no one really remembers why we have those K aides…
Emily, you do make that claim in the article, but you don’t substantiate it. So…the teachers wanted full-time pay, why not have them teach a full-size class all day to earn the money like most school systems do?
Your article also repeats a common misstatement about our elementary system. Tuesday 12:30 release days don’t represent a reduction in class time for K students (or any students for that matter). 30 hours is a standard elementary school week, 9 to 3 in most systems. We instead start at 8:30 and then leave 2.5 hours early one day per week to give the teachers a solid block of time for planning. To say that K students “have a full day 2 days per week and a short day 3 days per week” is misleading. The Tuesday 12:30 release is offset for all students by the 8:30 start.
@Rhanna if you speak with School Committee members from that era, as I did, you will learn that the reason we have this “hybrid” system was so kindergarten teacher would earn a full time salary rather than the half time salary they had been receiving. As to why they went with the hybrid schedule instead of having K students follow the same schedule grades 1-5 attend, it was due to the pushback from some parents who did not want a full time schedule for their K students. Indeed when I started advocating for FDK, two sitting School Committee members told me personally, when I asked them why we don’t have FDK, “because the parents don’t want it.” I was shocked to hear them say this because certainly almost all the parents I knew wanted it – ie families where both parents work for a living — because the current K schedule is a significant burden on working families. The two School Committee members who said this to me were from a more affluent part of the City and they appeared to be unaware of how working families were harmed by the current schedule.
So pleased to see this long sought improvement come to fruition. My children have all since graduated from the Newton Public Schools, but this issue was a bright line for me when I had to choose whether to keep my kids in their full day pre-K programs, or enroll them in what I saw as an inferior public K program. Another huge shout out of thanks to Margaret Albright and Emily Norton who have both been consistent, determined advocates for this and for the next generation of children who will greatly benefit from this huge improvement!
Emily, So in your narrative, there were two SC members serving together who were unaware of how many Title 1 schools we have in Newton, or who had just never given any thought to how life might be different for those folks? And that the SC viewed NPS parents being of one mind on this topic? On any school issue, there are as many opinions as there are parents. You can’t run for SC, much less serve, without understanding that.
I’ve never known an elected official in Newton who doesn’t understand Newton’s economic diversity. With the K model, as with most issues we face as a city, there are important trade-0ffs, and trying to make it all about the “haves” vs. the “have nots” does a disservice to our community.
@Rhanna
This is thankfully done, but the dialogue is instructive of why we have trouble making policy progress in Newton.
The trade-off you suggest: 15% less classroom time, in exchange for a better student-teacher ratio for 15% of the time, is a reasonable idea. Its well-intended. But as you noted yourself, there is no data suggesting that its better. None. And with a plethora of data suggesting more classroom time leads to better results, and many households with 2 working parents, the burden of proof should be on the “superior” model proving that it is actually better. Without the data, the change to FDK should have been done much sooner.
We shouldn’t be making policy decision based on subjective opinions and anecdotes, but objective data and well-established national best practices.
FDK should be easy. Later start times for high school should easy. The fact that it isn’t is heavily driven by well-intended people digging their heels in when the facts just don’t support it.
@Rhanna
FDK is thankfully done, but the continued dialogue is instructive of why we have trouble making policy progress in Newton.
The trade-off you suggest: 15% less classroom time, in exchange for a better student-teacher ratio for 15% of the time, is a reasonable idea. Its well-intended. But as you noted yourself, there is no data suggesting that its better. None. And with a plethora of data suggesting more classroom time leads to better results, and many households with 2 working parents, the burden of proof should be on the “superior” model proving that its actually better. Without the data, the change to FDK should have been done much sooner.
We shouldn’t be making policy decision based on subjective opinions and anecdotes, but objective data and national best practices.