Home visits to kindergartners may stop

Home visits for incoming kindergarten students in Springfield could become a thing of the past under a proposed new kindergarten "K Camp."

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Proposed kindergarten orientation to cut out home visits
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Photo by Len Emery Springfield’s Elm Hill School kindergarten teacher Andie Bentley teaches children about how soap works, using some milk and a dish soap. Published February 3, 2016 in the Rutland Herald Home visits to kindergartners may stop By Susan Smallheer STAFF WRITER SPRINGFIELD — Home visits for incoming kindergarten students in Springfield could become a thing of the past under a proposed new kindergarten “K Camp.” Elm Hill School Principal Dana Jacobson-Goodhue told members of the Springfield School Board Monday night that she wanted to discontinue home visits in an effort to give young students a smoother transition to full-day school. Jacobson-Goodhue said the current policy of teachers conducting home visits with all incoming kindergarten students took a full three days away from the school year. And, she said, kindergarten orientation also used an alternating schedule of half the students going to school every other day for the first six days of classes — a plan she wants to stop using. The one-day-on, one-day-off schedule creates day care problems for parents, she said, as well as continuity problems for the children. The sooner the kids are all together in a classroom, the better, she said. She said the home visits could be problematic for a variety of reasons. She said the home visit could lead to higher or lower expectations of the students by their teachers, when the focus should be on the students’ performance in the classroom only. She said the home visits can be inconvenient to the families as well, and that there could be a bias formed during the visits that can turn into a “double-edged sword” during the kindergarten year. While the home visits can be useful, she said, “It doesn’t tell us much of what the child can do in a school setting.” Under the K Camp plan, there would be orientation for students and parents, and two half-days for the students before other students return to school. Superintendent Zach McLaughlin said there were pluses and minuses to the home visits, and that more discussion was needed. “It can go either way,” he said. “There are advantages and disadvantages to home visits,” he said. Currently, prospective kindergartners have their first screening in spring, meeting their teacher and the school nurse. Students are first registered in May. Children must be 5 years old as of Sept. 1 to enter kindergarten. http://www.vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/RH/20160203/NEWS02/160209847 http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20160203/NEWS02/160209847