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“She is up to speed with her literacy and math skills,” and especially looks forward to her Spanish, art and music classes at Lyme School, Cameron said in an email Friday.
But as much as her daughter Isla enjoys her mornings in the classroom, the time she spends outside of it is just as important, her mom said. After school lets out at half-past noon, “she spends her afternoon outdoors or engaged in unstructured play with her siblings.”
Isla and the other students in her class are the only kindergartners in the Upper Valley for whom such open-ended afternoons are still the norm. They’re also the last. On March 10, Lyme voters decided, 82-67, to begin offering full-day kindergarten at Lyme School starting this fall — making it the final community in the Upper Valley to do so.
This change will take effect in the fall, when Cameron’s son Ewan is due to start kindergarten. She worries about Ewan having a negative experience in the full-day program, and — like several other parents interviewed for this story — is against the idea of full-day K because she feels it could favor academic benchmarks over joy.
“My main concern … is that the Lyme School will become one of those schools where kindergarten is the new first grade,” she said. “I don’t want the academic pressures and expectations to be unreasonable. I want my son to love kindergarten next year just as much as my daughter does this year.”
Lyme School Principal Jeff Valence said that, from what he can tell, parent satisfaction with the partial-day model — and concerns that extending the school day would also intensify it — played a large part in why voters were so hesitant to approve the transition; the article was voted down the first two years it appeared on the warrant.
“The push for full-day kindergarten seemed to be a response to a perceived deficit in the current program,” Cameron said. “I do not see any evidence of an academic deficit for Lyme students.”
But proponents of full-day kindergarten, including school officials in other districts that have recently made the transition, say the extra time in school benefits students socially and emotionally, and that the academic benefits may not necessarily reflect a more demanding learning environment. Instead, they may stem from the more leisurely pace of a full-day program.
But Lyme voters didn’t just clash over whether full-day K was good for students. They also had to weigh the financial impact of the transition, which added $56,749 onto the budget for the 2018-2019 academic year.
“Fifty-six thousand dollars seems like a small amount of money, but in a place like Lyme that struggles with a small tax base, it is a lot of money,” said Jonathan Voegele, who gave a slideshow presentation at the school district meeting in favor of full-day kindergarten. Last year, repairing significant storm damage to town roads was uppermost in voters’ minds, he said.
As of last summer, there is also another financial element to consider: Governor Chris Sununu signed a bill that will provide state funding for full-day kindergarten programs, starting in 2019. Under the new law, the state will grant schools an additional $1,100 per full-day kindergarten student per year, with the possibility of more funding to come, depending on how profitable the new keno lottery system turns out to be.
“Of course, there are still parents who believe children should spend their afternoons going on parent-led butterfly walks in their backyards, and it is challenging to convince them otherwise,” Voegele said.
Many Upper Valley schools have had full-day kindergarten in place for many years, but Lyme will have some company as it navigates this new territory. Cornish Elementary School is now in its second year of full-day kindergarten, for example, and Claremont schools are in their third.
In Cornish, the pre-K and kindergarten classes are combined, with the 4-year-olds in the group following the half-day model, and the 5-year-olds staying into the afternoon. Principal Jennifer Prileson said the change has been a positive one, both for students and the school.
“Love it,” she said over the phone last week. “We’ve had enrollment in our younger grades go up as a result … and the kids are getting so much more than they were before. Not only do they get their specials — P.E., art and music, and library — but there’s also more time for instruction and building literacy, both for math and language arts.” She added that because the content is spread over a longer day, there’s more time for the lessons to sink in.
Prileson said she’s also noticed that Cornish’s first full-day kindergarten class, now in first grade, now seems better socialized than former half-day students were in first grade.
“Socialization is extremely important,” she said. “I see a big difference, I really do, and I think we’re going to continue seeing more of that.” And because students were already familiar with the full-day model, full-day kindergartners also adapted more readily to first grade, Prileson added.
In Claremont, students are also demonstrating “measurable improvements,” said Cory LeClair, assistant superintendent of schools for SAU 6, in an email. Like Prileson, “we are specifically seeing a positive impact in first grade,” she said, adding that some first-grade teachers have even had to adjust their curriculum.
While LeClair sees these curriculum changes as evidence that full-day K can make for more successful students, not all parents think students’ academic skills should be the measure of a successful kindergarten program. But Valence has assured families that, in essence, the kindergarten experience at Lyme School will remain the same.
Rather than using the extra time to focus on academics, “we will continue to emphasize social (and) emotional development through play-based education,” he said. “Whether full-day or half-day, it doesn’t change the focus of our program.”
Lyons, the kindergarten teacher at Lyme, echoed these sentiments in a recent email. “A full day program will allow us to include more play-based activities and move throughout our day at a slower pace. Therefore, our academic goals will remain consistent based upon developmental readiness,” she wrote.
And Adrienne Flower, whose daughter went to kindergarten at Lyme School and whose son is due to start this fall, left a Friday meeting with Valence feeling heartened by the reminder that full-day K is not technically mandatory — that if families really want to, they can still pick up their children midday.
She said Valence also assured her that “children will spend an increased amount of time learning to be part of a school community, exploring their natural world through an extension of the Forest Fridays program and reviewing the present curriculum at a less hurried pace.”
Cameron is still wary of full-day K in Lyme, which for her is a matter of quality versus quantity. “My philosophy is more in tune with the idea that ‘education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire,’ ” she said.
Though parents may hold differing opinions on what best lights this fire — whether a butterfly walk, playtime with peers, an alphabet lesson or some combination of the three — Lyme’s decision will offer students, and families, something to learn from.
EmmaJean Holley can be reached at ejholley@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.