I about fell off of the couch reading the June 8 story about “Full-day kindergarten: primary equity” programs that are available to all students in Evergreen Public Schools and the response from Vancouver Public Schools, stating that their district decided not to offer such programs to all schools in order to lower class size. Oh, really?
At the beginning of this school year, my husband, who teaches fourth grade in the Vancouver district, had what would be considered a reasonable class size, especially given he works at a high-poverty school. However, district administration determined that the class size he and his teaching partners had was too small and so they transferred a teacher and “reconstituted” the classes, which resulted in these teachers having 29 to 30 students in a class. This is keeping class sizes low? I don’t think so.
In this day-and-age of emphasis on test scores and teacher accountability, Vancouver schools need to pay attention to the data and evidence that early intervention and full-day programs for kindergarten and pre-school will result in children being more successful and ready for school. Evergreen seems to have scrutinized their budget for trims to fund full-day kindergarten. If Evergreen can do it, so can Vancouver.
Kathryn Crandall
Vancouver