Starting next school year, every elementary school in the Gilroy
Unified School District will run all-day kindergarten programs.
Starting next school year, every elementary school in the Gilroy Unified School District will run all-day kindergarten programs.
Currently, Antonio Del Buono, El Roble, Glen View and Luigi Aprea elementary schools only run half-day kindergarten classes because of a lack of space, Superintendent Deborah Flores said. With class sizes increasing next school year due to budget cuts, which will free up classrooms all over the district, administrators expect to have the space they need to house the program at all eight elementary schools.
Implementing all-day kindergarten programs is one of the few silver linings of increasing class sizes, said Glen View Principal Scott Otteson.
“There wasn’t room available so it was never an option,” Otteson said. “In the past, we haven’t had the extra classroom space at all, but next year we should have plenty.”
This year, Glen View runs five half-day kindergarten classes between three classrooms. With the half-day programs, schools use one classroom to teach a morning class and a separate afternoon class. Two teachers share the classroom and overlap for about an hour. When a teacher isn’t teaching her own class, she usually has time to plan or helps the other teacher, Otteson said. Next year, each kindergarten teacher and class will have their own classroom.
Otteson said he had received positive feedback from both parents and teachers, who had already begun putting together a proposal for the school day next year.
More time spent in the classroom “will definitely be beneficial,” said Antonio Del Buono Principal Velia Codiga.
“I have yet to meet a parent that has not wanted to go to all-day kindergarten,” she said.
Although the school board approved moving forward with all-day kindergarten programs at all elementary schools back in 2005, the district simply did not have the space to house the program.
Lisa Andrade is a parent who’s seen both sides of the coin. Her fourth grade son attended full-day kindergarten at Rod Kelley Elementary but her first grade son attended the half-day program at Antonio Del Buono.
“The transition to first grade (for the older son) was definitely easier because he was used to being in school all day,” Andrade said. “Nowadays most kids to go preschool anyway so they’re ready for all-day kindergarten.”
Her older son came out of kindergarten already reading, she said.
Matching up kindergartners’ schedules with that of older students will also make parents’ schedules more simple.
“You could essentially spend all day in the car before,” Andrade said.
