All-day kindergarten hits local growth spurt

COEUR d’ALENE — The Coeur d'Alene school board on Monday unanimously voted to expand all-day kindergarten opportunities in the Coeur d'Alene School District in the 2019-2020 school year, following a recommendation from the early education committee.

“I would recommend that this is the general direction that we go,” said Coeur d'Alene Superintendent Steve Cook. "The state will eventually catch up, but our parents are telling us that they’re ready now."

Space, cost and implementation were points of discussion during the meeting, during which elementary education director Kate Orozco presented the proposal.

The recommendation was to expand full-day kindergarten to Northwest Expedition Academy free of charge to parents and to expand full-day kindergarten with tuition to Atlas, Dalton, Ramsey and Skyway. Tuition-based programming was implemented at Hayden Meadows and Sorensen last year. Free all-day kindergarten programs have been available at Borah, Bryan, Fernan and Winton elementary schools since 2014-2015.

Orozco presented national data that suggests that full-day kindergarten programming in general is a "very, very good thing for some of our youngest learners."

"We know that in literacy and in math particularly, there is a significant effect size in terms of improvement and learning," she said.

Locally, data from Borah, Bryan, Winton and Fernan yielded overwhelmingly positive results, including assessments that show students’ basic reading skills improving between 8.5 percent and 100 percent.

“This is pretty significant," Orozco said.

The state provides funding only for half-day kindergarten. School district communications director Scott Maben explained that the district covers the cost of full-day at those four schools because of the high percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals.

Expanding full-day kindergarten will require $76,755 to cover credit card processing, program deficit, moving one portable classroom, furniture needs and additional clerical hours. Portables will be used to hold class for older students, so the schools will need to do some classroom shuffling. Some will mobilize computer labs and convert those spaces into classrooms.

“We’ve run this every way we can think of and we seem to think that this could be done,” Cook said. "We don’t have the luxury of telling parents, ‘Wait to put your kid in kindergarten until we have some more space.’ Our parents are telling us they’re ready."

Vice Chair Lisa May said she’s concerned about not being able to offer full-day kindergarten in all the schools and that it will be "a hard pill to swallow" for parents who want to put their children in the all-day classes. Chair Casey Morrisroe said he hopes that it can be offered for free at all the schools in the near future.

"I understand people may be upset if they don’t get into it, but we could also have nothing and have all half-day," he said. "I think it’s a step in the right direction."