Sue Flicop

In the past few months,  number of people have asked me if I support all-day kindergarten.   I don’t feel it’s a simple “yes” or “no” answer, though, and that can sometimes frustrate those who have asked.  Technically, Newton does have all-day kindergarten.   Certainly the teachers are there all day, though the class size is cut in half in the afternoon.

And that is trade-off right there.  If we want full-day kindergarten, we will not have the two afternoons with only a small number of children in the class.  We will have four afternoons with the full class.

The current system was the result of compromise between parents who wanted their children in school the full day and those who felt that the full schedule or the full number of students were too much for their children in their first year of public school.   I recognize that this is a difficult and exasperating schedule for working parents, exacerbated in recent years by the expenses and space crunch in aftercare programs.

This is certainly a decision the School Committee can revisit and would require discussion about our values and priorities with the community and with the teachers.