Kindergarten neighborhood assignments

I am sure many of our kindergarten parents are anxious to know if their child is in morning or afternoon kindergarten this fall. To give you as much advance knowledge as possible, here are the neighborhood assignments for the kindergarten classes in the fall of 2007. In the AM session will be students from Brighton Ridge, Westglen, Mill Ponds and Chicory Place. In the PM session will be students from Meadowlakes and Stonehaven.

Comments

[Sharon Murray]

Why is the Meadowlakes time changed to P.M. this year?

[Jason Bednar]

When we put this together, we looked at several factors. Each neighborhood has different numbers of incoming kindergarteners and we need to have a balance between AM and PM. We also wanted to have our walking students in the AM session this year.

I have absolute belief in all three of our kindergarten teachers. All three are fantastic and will provide wonderful experiences for all students, so I do not think this change will deny any students an excellent classroom experience.

Meadowlakes has the largest number of incoming kindergarteners, but is not large enough to have a session filled only with students from this neighborhood. We could not partner Meadowlakes with Westglen or Brighton Ridge due to the size of those groups. With the effort to have our walking students in the morning, we had to move Meadowlakes to the afternoon.

[Sharon Murray]

It's not a matter of the competency of the staff, it's more a matter of consistency. I believe Villages has been A.M. kindergarten since the opening of Owen. Why is it necessary for Westglen,Brighton Ridge, and other walkers to be in the A.M. session?

[Jason Bednar]

Meadowlakes has not always been in the AM session of kindergarten at Owen. On top of that, it may have fluctuated in the years Meadowlakes attended McCarty. We wanted to move walkers to the morning in an effort to make the bus ride a little easier for kindergarten. We feel that having the larger group of bus riding kindergarten students returning home with older peers is a good approach. This also makes our mid-day bus routes a little easier to manage.