N E W S KINDERGARTEN continued from page 13
entering kindergarteners for Las Lomitas for three years while the program phases in. Those class sizes will remain smaller the entire time the children are at the school. “It is regrettable, but perhaps understandable, that districts dealing with an enrollment crunch would be looking for any way to manage their growing enrollment,” he said. Both the Las Lomitas and Menlo Park districts are facing growing enrollment that is overcrowding schools. While all the elementary school districts in the Almanac’s circulation area also use attorneys from the county counsel’s office, and, according to Mr. Whitlock “the office gives the same advice to all our schools,” they are each taking the advice differently. In the Portola Valley School District, which has two schools and 656 students, Superintendent Lisa Gonzales said they have three children in their transitional kindergarten program this year and “a well-trained, credentialed teacher who provides a nurturing environment for our youngest students,” who share a classroom with one-year
kindergarten students. The district has no plans to drop the program, she said. In Woodside, the smallest local district, with one school and 451 students, the twoyear kindergarten class has 16 students, who have their own classroom. Woodside allows any child to attend the two-year kindergarten who the teachers and parents think would benefit from the two-year program, regardless of birthdate. In the Menlo Park City School District, with four schools and 2,926 students, there are 30 children in a transitional kindergarten program, which, like Portola Valley, incorporates the two-year kindergarteners into one-year kindergarten classrooms. Next year, however, when the Kindergarten Readiness Act says children born between Sept. 1 and Dec. 2 would be eligible for two-year kindergarten, the district “does not anticipate enrolling students in a two-year Kindergarten program unless State funding to provide an extra year of Kindergarten for them becomes available, or other circumstances change,” the district website says. Not having a transitional See KINDERGARTEN, page 16
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October 16, 2013 N TheAlmanacOnline.com N The Almanac N 15