Editorial: TC's kindergarten change may give kids a better start

February 22, 2008 09:52 am

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If you think your schedule is complicated, try being a Traverse City schools kindergartner. Right now, your days fall into one of three offerings:

-- Alternating full days on Mondays and Wednesdays with half days on Fridays.

-- Alternating full days Tuesdays and Thursdays, with half days on Fridays.

-- All-day, every-day classes, but only if you attend Traverse Heights or Blair elementary schools.

And they're only 5 years old.

None of this, of course, is remotely amusing for the parents of those kindergartners, who have to not only maneuver their own lives around whichever schedule the family ends up with but also have to wonder if this is what's best for their kids.

That's a debate with no end. But right now, the pendulum seems to be swinging to what a lot of parents and a lot of educators say makes the most sense: All-day every-day kindergarten.

Traverse City schools, for the first time in a long time, changed this year to an all-day every-day schedule at Blair and Traverse Heights elementary schools. They plan to expand the program to Courtade and Interlochen elementary schools next year.

The reasons are simple and encouraging.

Some parents have long asked for an alternative to the existing every-other-day system for a number of reasons, including a saner weekly schedule for them and their children and their belief that a more consistent schedule and more time in the classroom will help kids achieve more.

Educators, too, have embraced the change. Officials have said the full-week schedule gives those students a greater exposure to school and at the right age. Preschool programs of all kinds have been in place for decades; Head Start, a federal program for children age 3 to 5 that began in 1965, is one of the most successful federal education programs ever.

The district said it purposely started the all-day, every-day programs in schools with the highest number of at-risk students in hopes that the more academic training the better. Parents also don't have to fret over day care or juggling job and school schedules.

The district intends to eventually switch all its elementary schools to the every-day schedule.

This is not only good news for parents and students, it should also produce some positive results for the district as a whole. All-day every-day may draw more students to Traverse City schools and, with them, the state's $7,204-per-pupil stipend.

The district has been steadily losing students to private and charter schools, and must stop the bleeding. Solid academics and new offerings -- like all-day kindergarten and the recently announced Freshman Academy for ninth-graders heading to the high schools --are the best way to do that.