Kevin Kuesters
Should Loudoun institute Full-Day Kindergarten in all elementary schools and, if
so, how can it be implemented?
Full disclosure: I read the responses on your blog from Bob Ohneiser, Debbie Rose,
John Stevens, Eric Hornberger, Debbie Piland, Priscilla Godfrey and Bill Fox before
submitting my response to you.
LCPS has 59 elementary schools right now and 12 of these schools already have full-
day kindergarten (FDK). Therefore we would need to add FDK to 47 existing schools to
implement it in all elementary schools.
Mish-mashing the math (I’m a CPA, its what I do!) using figures from two of the
aforementioned candidate responses, if we would need the capacity of approximately
2.5 schools to go to FDK, and each elementary school (ES) is projected to cost
$25,165,000 (per FY 2013 CIP estimates), then it will cost us approximately $62,912,500
to build enough rooms to implement FDK just for the current schools. This is a low-ball
estimate of the one-time construction cost to put FDK into existing schools.
Assuming most elementary schools only have 2 half-day kindergarten (HDK) classes,
we would also be adding at least 1 more classroom to each school at a minimum cost of
$200,000 (the cost of a trailer).
We would also be adding the cost of a teacher and teacher’s aide for each kindergarten
classroom with more than 15 students. Since the average class size is 22 kids, and
assuming the teacher and teacher’s aide earn the second lowest salary on the pay
scale ($43,815), we would add $87,630 for each new kindergarten classroom, before
considering the cost of benefits for each teacher. Let’s just round it up to $100k in
salaries and benefits for each new kindergarten class. (By the way, only 84.20 teachers
out of the 4,000 or so employed by LCPS make that low salary.) Multiplying $100k in
salary and benefits times 47 (ES that currently do not have FDK), gives us $4.7 million in
additional salaries and benefits every year if we add FDK. This is a low-ball estimate of
the annual increase in the operating budget
So the estimated cost to implement FDK in LCPS would be around $63 million in
one time construction costs, plus $4.7 million in increased annual costs for teacher
salaries & benefits in existing schools, plus $200k additional construction costs for each
new ES, plus $100k in increased annual personnel costs for each new ES.
So what are the benefits?
LCPS runs a school system for grades K-12 and therefore it makes sense to look at
the end result – the finished student as he or she graduates from high school and goes
to college or to work. There are no studies that evidence an appreciable difference
between graduating high school seniors that went to HDK vice FDK. In fact most
studies that look at the difference in academic achievement between half-day and full-
day kindergarten students show that by 4th grade any advantage held by the full day
kindergarten students has disappeared. Therefore, from an academic standpoint FDK is
not needed. There is one exception to this rule though: at-risk kids. At-risk kids who
attend FDK are shown to perform statistically better than at-risk kids who attend HDK
through their entire K-12 careers.
My position: Ultimately the quality of the kindergarten experience matters more than the
length of the day. Full-day kindergarten provides measurable benefits to at-risk kids and
I would support FDK for at-risk kids. Since LCPS already has implemented FDK for this
population, I do not support any further expansion of FDK in LCPS at this time.
Joy Maloney
Yes, Loudoun should institute full-day kindergarten. As a two working-parent family, we put my daughter in full-day kindergarten at the superb AOL Child Development Center. We wished she could go to her neighborhood school, but we simply didn't think it was fair to her to be bussed around from school to school when she already loved her childcare center so much. Still, she told me the other day that she wished she had gone to kindergarten at Mill Run, because all of her friends had that one extra year to get to know each other. Full-day kindergarten gives students the transition they need into their elementary school while also giving teachers time to really teach.
The hard part, of course, is implementing it. We are in a tough economic situation right now, and we are going to have a difficult challenge just maintaining the excellent education our schools provide, let alone improving on it. We can start by having a concrete long-term plan. We need to begin building new schools with the assumption that there will be full-day kindergarten in those schools. We need to add schools each year that offer full-day kindergarten to at least disadvantaged children. We can offer it at schools, but not make it required to begin with, possibly keeping enrollment lower to start.
Fairfax County began implementing full-day kindergarten over 10 years ago. They finally came up with a plan to rapidly expand full-day kindergarten in 2006. It took them two years longer than their plan to actually get it accomplished. We need a plan, and maybe it will take longer than we expect, too. But if we don't start, we won't finish.
