Is Full Day Kindergarten Good for Our Kids?

Full day kindergarten is a hot topic in many parts of the country. Full day vs. half day kindergarten fuels much debate between parents and in this issue you really have to take one side or the other. Of course, working parents prefer full day kindergarten because it means that extra child care only has to be paid for from the hours of 2 or 3 o'clock until the workday is finished. School districts that offer half day kindergarten force the working parents to pay extra for more hours of care.

There are other benefits involved besides the monetary issue of daycare costs. If you live in a town that is affluent and also has many families in which the mother works, those families are likely to send their kids to a private school which offers a full day kindergarten program. The families with stay at home mothers or families who can't afford private school will send their children to the free half day kindergarten program.

This type of discrepancy in educational opportunities lays the groundwork for students who attended full day kindergarten to enter first grade on a more advanced level. The full day programs have more time to teach phonics, math, handwriting and culture/social studies. Besides gaining more exposure to academics, the full day classes will have had more diverse lessons, such as cooking classes, more various and educational field trips, in-school programs like assemblies, and more chances to interact with other kids.

Of course, the arguments against full day kindergarten are budgetary restrictions on the school districts and parents' arguments that a full day is too long for 5 year olds to be at school. The hardest obstacle to overcome in affluent towns whose mothers don't work is twofold.

The first challenge is getting the issue of a full day public kindergarten on the school ballot. That part is actually the easy part. The bigger challenge is to convince the town residents to vote to approve the budget needed to implement the full day kindergarten. Many parents are old-fashioned about education and don't see the necessity in their children attending a full day of school when they are five years old.

The other population of residents likely to reject the ballot question is families who no longer have children in the school system or whose children attend private school. They may link full day kindergarten to a rise in the amount of property taxes they will have to pay in future years.

It's a difficult task to get the full day kindergarten idea into the mind of the mainstream population. However, baby steps are being taken and our grandchildren might be fortunate enough to receive this benefit.