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Ministry rejects local kindergarten proposal

Sea to Sky School Board wants to treat all students the same: Chair

The Sea to Sky School Board has presented a proposal to B.C.’s Ministry of Education that would see full-day kindergarten offered to all five-year-old students in the district at the same time, but it appears the Minister has already rejected the suggestion.

Under the Ministry’s current implementation plan to eventually offer full-day kindergarten to all students in B.C., only about half of students will start the full-day program this September. Full day kindergarten will be offered to all students in B.C. starting in September 2011.

That leaves school districts with the task of deciding which schools, or which individual students, will be offered the expanded program this fall, said Rick Price, Sea to Sky School Board chair. While the Province is funding full-day spots for 194 students in the Sea to Sky District, about 300 kids are expected to enrol in kindergarten — leaving more than 100 out of the full-day program, he said.

“We just don’t like the idea of creating a kind of winners and losers, haves and have-nots scenario,” Price said. “We like to try and treat everyone the same.”

So, at a district parent’s suggestion, the Sea to Sky board has proposed to offer full-day kindergarten to all students, but only for about half of the next school year, he said. Instead of offering the full-day program to some students in September, it could be offered to all students in January or February for the same amount of government funding.

“That would mean everyone was treated the same,” Price said. “It seems like a perfect solution to us.”
But according to a Ministry spokesperson, Minister Margaret MacDiarmid has rejected the school board’s suggestion. Implementing full-day kindergarten in B.C. is a “huge undertaking” and the Sea to Sky board’s suggestion is too much of a departure from what other districts are doing, the spokesperson said Monday (Feb. 15).

B.C. school districts were asked to choose either to accept funding for about half their students, or simply wait until September 2011 to implement full-day kindergarten for all students. Five districts decided to reject the year one funding and wait until 2011, while 55 districts — including Sea to Sky — accepted their allotted funding.

Price said the board doesn’t like the idea of turning down the year one funding in favour of waiting until 2011 for full implementation, because then no students benefit from a program that could be offered to at least some.

He said in earlier conversations with ministry staff members, Sea to Sky board members were told their proposal probably wouldn’t work. But the board decided to appeal to MacDiarmid directly in a letter.

On Monday, Price said it’s “news to me” that the Minister has rejected the proposal. If that’s the case, he said he’d like an explanation.

“We’re puzzling about why the answer would be ‘no’ to what seems like quite a fair way of doing what the government intended,” he said.

If the proposal is rejected, the board will have to decide whether to offer full-day kindergarten to only some students this fall, or not offer it to any students and wait for full implementation in 2011, Price said.

The B.C. government has pledged $151 million over two years to implement full-day kindergarten in the province. According to information on the Education Ministry website, students offered full-day kindergarten “will have more time for deeper learning and exploration, and teachers will also be able to spend more time with students who require extra support” than those who remain in the half-day program.

“This difference will only exist for one year, since by September 2011 all children will have access to full-day kindergarten,” the site says.

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