Full Day Kindergarten in Newfoundland and Labrador

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Full day kindergarten should be implemented and has community support as well as support from the NDP. The government explored the options and decided that it was low priorty and abandoned the idea.

No reason was given other than a general statement that it was "low priority". The total cost would have been about 130 teaching units - which is ironically what was just axed in the 2013 budget, and some portable classrooms for a few schools that are currently at full capacity.

Analysis

When the kindergarten class is small, the children are often combined with grade 1, especially since grade 1 is often small too. It would be senseless to send a kindergarten student home at noon while the rest of his classmates continue with their lessons. The dollar cost to do this is often zero.

The combining rules for grades are listed below. For example, if there were 2 children in kindergarten, and three in each of grades 1 and 2, all eight children could be combined since the total number of children is less than 12.

The standard classroom size is 20 children in kindergarten, and 25 for all other grades.

Classes Combined Max class size
K with any 1 other 15
K with any 2 others 12
K with any 3 others 10
Any 2 primary (K-3) 15
Any 3 primary (K-3) 14
Any 2 primary(k-3) / elementary(4-6) 15
Any 3 primary(k-3) / elementary(4-6) 15
Any 2 elementary(4-6) / intermediate(7-9) 15
Any 3 elementary(4-6) / Intermediate(7-9) 15


Larger kindergarten classes in rural areas are not a problem either since most school buildings have empty classrooms that can be used for full day kindergarten. For these schools, the added cost might be the need for a part time teacher to become full time. This should be seen as an investment, not an expense.

Full day kindergarten everywhere would require approximately 125 full time equivalent teaching positions.

Some city schools are at capacity. It is not trivial nor cheap to add portable classrooms, however, it is better to implement full day classes where possible (most schools) and explain to the public why some schools have to wait until portable classrooms can be added. The public will accept reasonable, thoughtful solutions.

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