Reply to On the chopping block: AAP Centers

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "On the chopping block: AAP Centers"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The kindergarten proposal was developed over several years.  There was a phase-in approach based on a weighting criteria. They had a list of remaining schools to be switched from half-day to full-day and just worked the remainder of the list.
[/quote]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/back-to-school-in-northern-virginia/2011/09/02/gIQAt55b5J_story.html

[quote]The county began offering full-day kindergarten in its neediest schools during the late 1990s. In 2006, the School Board planned an aggressive expansion into every school.

Then the economy collapsed. Tight budgets forced school officials to increase class sizes and make a series of painful cuts. The expansion of full-day kindergarten came to a halt, leaving 36 schools in the county’s more affluent areas without the full-day option.

“It really was an equity issue,” said board member Jane K. Strauss (Dranesville), whose district included many schools without the full-day program.

Students in the half-day classes were required to learn the same material as their full-day peers. Teachers crammed spelling and subtraction lessons into the allotted hours, leaving little time for exploration, play and questions, said Katy Trinh, a kindergarten teacher at Orange Hunt.

“A lot of times we only had five minutes for snack. I told the kids to chew-swallow, chew-swallow, chew-swallow,” she said, laughing. “Now we can kind of slow things down a little bit.”

Last year, a group of Fairfax parents led a lobbying effort for full-day kindergarten in all schools. They circulated a petition, organized rallies and showed up in droves to testify at public meetings.

Although this year’s budget is hardly roomy, that outpouring helped persuade the School Board to vote in favor of extending full-day kindergarten to the remaining schools for about $7.8 million, mostly for additional teachers.[/quote][/quote]

My MS DC was in the middle of this and (1) this was a multi year phase in, just like the MS LLIV program and (2) there was no redistricting involved w/the K Changeover, which dI'd not need boundary studies which takes time. Not only would center students  need to change, but the deficit would need to be made up with base school kids. Doing this county wide will take time and community comment on what will be  Several options. This is is expensive, and takes time, community meetings & input for each school, etc. they would almost do 1-2 centers per year, just as there are with MS LLIV. That program, btw is proceeding deliberately, on a 5-7 year schedule, and without lots of pushback. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics