Interest swells in Shawano all-day 4K program

The Shawano School District has surpassed its original vision for all-day 4-year-old kindergarten, according to a report presented to the Shawano School Board on July 19.

Originally, the district anticipated two classes of all-day 4K, along with some half-day classes, when it approved the plan to offer all-day classes several months ago. The plan included a potential lottery system if the enrollment of all-day students went past the capacity for the two classes, but there were enough students enrolled to have a third all-day class. This leaves Hillcrest Primary School with two of the classes and LEADS Primary Charter School with one.

Hillcrest principal Troy Edwards said that 51 students had been enrolled for all-day 4K by the district’s June 30 deadline, with classrooms having a cap of 20 students. There are five other students on a waiting list, as well as 56 students enrolled for half-day 4K.

Edwards said he discussed the possibility of adding the third all-day class with the district’s finance committee, which gave its blessing.

The 4K program has seen popularity in previous years. The district had 127 students enrolled in 4K in the 2018-19 school years and 114 in 2019-20. Enrollment dropped in 2020-21 due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Edwards, and the district only had 99 students.

“Our interest is definitely up,” Edwards said. “We’re reversing the trend of our downward slide in enrollment numbers, which is very exciting, and I’m attributing it to the fact that we have that all-day option.”

The all-day 4K is expected to help the district reach its grade-level goals, something that has not been happening with the half-day program. With its reading goal for students to be able to identify 21 letters in the alphabet, a goal of 75% was set for the last school year, but only 60% achieved, according to Edwards. A math goal of 80% being able to identify numbers fell far short at 46%, and another math goal for counting set at 72% only saw 55% of students reach the benchmark.

“While we get close, we have yet to reach that mark,” Edwards said. “This would definitely be an opportunity to provide more instructional opportunities.”

All-day 4K is also expected to help bring families into the district and keep them here. Edwards said some families enrolled had mentioned they would attend other schools with all-day 4K if Shawano did not offer its own. Doing this will hopefully encourage families to stay with Shawano public schools into 5-year-old kindergarten and beyond, he said.

“We have families on this list who have attended other schools, including parochial schools,” Edwards said. “I know we have several on the list that have been checking in with us to see if we had final information on whether we could add another section or not because there are deadlines at other schools and they planned to attend other schools if we did not offer the all-day 4K options for them. If you’re looking at long-term retention, we don’t have to worry about them going to other schools and liking it and wanting to stay.”

Besides the academic benefits, the all-day program will allow for increased time to focus on students’ emotional development, according to Edwards, as well as develop the basics of being in school, making it easier to go into future grades. Families would have two meals covered through the program, as opposed to one for a half-day.

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com