Belmont-Redwood Shores Community,

Last night, we had an eventful board meeting that covered a range of important topics: school safety, possibly extending the kindergarten day next year, the new science standards, budget reductions, and attendance policies. In this email, I'll highlight school safety, the kindergarten day, and our parcel tax measure.

School Safety
We continue to make school safety a priority. After school next Wednesday, the staffs at our six elementary campuses will be conducting lockdown drills and related safety training with officers from the Belmont Police and the Redwood City Police. Ralston Middle School recently conducted a similar training. As part of next week's exercise, we will send a "test" text message to all parents in the District to ensure that our system works as intended. If you don't get a text message on Wednesday afternoon, please reach out to your principal or school's front office staff. We'll follow up afterwards with another email reminder, too.

Extending the Kindergarten Day in 2018-19
Last night, the Board discussed extending the kindergarten day. The Board was generally supportive of extending the kindergarten day, and they advised me to solicit more stakeholder input and return to the April 26 meeting with a more specific proposal for a program model and schedule. With this email, I want to let all of our families know that we are considering this shift. I have pasted my memo to the Board at the bottom of this email. I will be meeting with principals and kindergarten teachers next week to consult them and take input on a recommended structure and length for the kindergarten day for 2018-19. I expect that we'll consider different options, including making an intermediate shift for 2018-19 and leaving room for a second shift for 2019-20. Of course, parent input is welcome. You can share your thoughts on the length of the kindergarten day, curricular emphasis, etc. by replying to this email, which will go to me. For every email sent to me, I will copy the Board on my reply so that they are aware of parents' opinions. (If you have sent in feedback already, there is no need to resend a message.) I will send out an update on this effort to all TK-8 parents and incoming kindergarten parents well ahead of the April 26 board meeting. My goal is to have firm beginning and end times for the 2018-19 kindergarten day by the end of the month.

Our Parcel Tax Measure is Measure K
On March 8, the Board voted to put a parcel tax measure on the June 5 ballot. As a reminder, the measure is $118/parcel/year for five years, it provides an exemption for seniors and those qualifying for disability benefits, and it would generate $325/student/year. If passed, it would close 40% of the $800/student/year gap in funding between BRSSD and the state average for K-8 school districts. A 2/3 majority is required for the measure to pass. More information about Measure K can be found on the District website and the Measure K campaign website.

Thank you for your support and engagement. Don't hesitate to email me with comments or questions.

Michael Milliken
Superintendent



Memo to the Board of Trustees re: Extended Day Kindergarten


DATE:           March 29, 2018
TO:                 Board of Trustees
SUBJECT:      Kindergarten Instructional Day
 
 
DISCUSSION ITEM
Staff asks for the Board’s guidance regarding extending the kindergarten instructional day at our elementary schools.
 
BACKGROUND
Since the advent of transitional kindergarten in 2012, our kindergarten students are now three months older than they were before that year (required to turn 5 years old by September 1 rather than December 2). In addition to being older, our kindergarten students are expected to learn more than before. In 2010, California adopted the Common Core Standards in math and English, which increased the rigor of our state’s academic standards. Our older kindergarten students are capable of learning more in a longer instructional day, and the state expects our kindergarten students to learn more than it has in the past.    

According to the non-profit, non-partisan research organization Child Trends, the number of children attending full-day kindergarten in the US has been steadily increasing. In 1977, 27.5% of US children attended full-day kindergarten. By 2013, 77.1% of US children attended full-day kindergarten.[1] Locally, Belmont-Redwood Shores has a relatively short instructional day in kindergarten at four hours. San Carlos School District’s instructional day in kindergarten is five hours, and Burlingame School District’s instructional day in kindergarten is five and a half hours. Last year, the Palo Alto Unified School District extended their kindergarten day (to six hours, 10 minutes) with positive results.[2] When surveyed, 97% of parents were satisfied with full-day kindergarten in Palo Alto. We propose to extend our instructional day to six hours, equivalent with our first grade instructional day.  

Research suggests that a longer kindergarten day is beneficial for all students. Attached is a New America article from 2014 describing a University of Virginia study[3] that was able to use randomized assignment to full-day and part-day kindergarten. Full-day kindergarten provided strong literacy benefits for all students on average. Another attached article features an Ontario schools study from the University of Toronto, which found that full-day kindergarten provided significant benefits in literacy and self-regulation.[4] While we will not be able to staff our full-day kindergarten program like Palo Alto or Ontario, a longer instructional day in Belmont-Redwood Shores will give our kindergarten teachers more time to provide a well-rounded experience for our students—time for free choice, exploration, and play. We are confident that our students will experience academic, social-emotional, and self-regulation benefits from a longer kindergarten day.    

Additionally, we propose to give principals and school sites the flexibility to stagger as needed their kindergarten instructional day vis-à-vis the other grade levels (up to 15 minutes) to avoid excessive traffic issues, while being sure to provide the kindergarten teachers with their required planning and lesson preparation time.

We do not propose to change the four-hour transitional kindergarten instructional day at this time. We have checked Education Code and consulted staff at the California Department of Education. Education Code 37202 (b) would allow our school district to provide different lengths of the school day for transitional kindergarten and kindergarten. 

We have been advised by legal counsel that our collective bargaining agreement allows for this shift, and we have given formal notice to the Belmont-Redwood Shores Faculty Association of this proposal and the Board’s discussion of it. 
 
Last, we expect the cost of this extension of the kindergarten instructional day to be modest, considering that we are getting an extra two hours of schooling in each of 130 school days for 450 kindergarteners. If we hired 3 lunch supervisors to monitor a separate kindergarten lunch for 1 hour per school, it would cost an additional $58,000 for the entire District for the year, which we consider to be an upper limit. Also, we would expect a reduction in $5,000 in afterschool childcare costs for Tinsley kindergarten students. Last, we would expect a one-time additional cost for summer planning for kindergarten teachers to plan for a longer instructional day in the fall. If we gave each of our 18 kindergarten teachers 20 hours of additional planning time to use as they see fit, that would be 360 hours x $30 = $10,800. 


Attachments:
  1. Child Trends DataBank, Full-day Kindergarten: Indicators of Child and Youth Well-Being, February 2015.
  2. CJ Libassi for New America, “Best Research Yet on the Effects of Full-Day Kindergarten,” December 2014.
  3. Marva Hinton for EdWeek, “Full-Day Kindergarten Students Do Better Than Half-Day Students, Analysis Finds,” August 2017. 
  4. Clarisse Haxton for PAUSD, Full-Day Kindergarten Implementation Evaluation Study, 2017.
  5. National Education Association, Full-Day Kindergarten: An Advocacy Guide, Section 1 only, 2006.


Footnotes
  1. Child Trends DataBank, Full-day Kindergarten: Indicators of Child and Youth Well-Being, February 2015. See attached.
  2. See Clarisse Haxton for PAUSD, Full-Day Kindergarten Implementation Evaluation Study, 2017, attached. Also, note that Palo Alto starts the first six weeks of the year with a four-hour instructional day for kindergarten, and then shifts to the six-hour instructional day in early October.
  3. The Gibbs paper from the University of Virginia is not attached because it’s 47 pages long. It can be found here. The study examined the progress of students randomly assigned to part-day and full-day kindergarten across five school districts, with over 600 students assigned to full-day kindergarten and over 400 students assigned to part-day kindergarten. The study reported an average full-day kindergarten benefit of .31 standard deviations in literacy skills as measured at the end of the school year.   
  4. It is important to note that the Ontario schools structured and staffed their full-day kindergarten program differently (a 2-year kindergarten program staffed with an additional early learning specialist), so the same effects should not be expected in Belmont-Redwood Shores.