Linda Dawson is IASB director of editorial services and Journal editor.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... ." So begins Charles Dickens' epic A Tale of Two Cities. For school boards considering whether to offer all-day or half-day kindergarten, their decisions may seem like the opening of the novel, right down to the spring of hope/winter of despair comparison also contained in that famous opening paragraph.

According to a 1995 ERIC Digest article by Dianne Rothenberg, "Research studies confirm that attendance in all-day kindergarten results in academic and social benefits for students, at least in the primary grades." That could be good news in districts looking for a "silver bullet" answer to raising achievement.

Other research suggests that any gains achieved by attending kindergarten all day all but disappear by the time students reach third grade ... the benchmark grade where yearly testing begins for all students under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

When boards deliberate the question of whether to offer all-day or half-day kindergarten, they should be able to find research to support either position. But the question has to be answered not only with academic research and the board's gut feelings but with an ear to parental requests, hard financial data and facility facts.

Leading up to its decision, the discussions themselves around the board table become more important than the outcome of whether the district adopts all-day kindergarten, continues with a half-day program, tries a blend of the two or reverses an original decision.

According to The School Code of Illinois, kindergarten programs and attendance actually are optional. (105 ILCS 5/26-1) The compulsory attendance age is from age 7 until 17. But very few schools do not offer at least a half-day option for students when they are 5. And even if the district offers all-day kindergarten, a half-day option must be offered to parents as an alternative. (105 ILCS 5/10-22.19a)

The number of all-day kindergarten programs listed in the Illinois State Board of Education fall housing report increased slightly between 2004-05 and 2006-07, going from 1,287 schools, to 1,321 and then to 1,346.

While the number of schools offering all-day kindergarten is increasing, the percentage of students in half-day and all-day programs remains substantially the same.

In 2004-05, of the 145,797 kindergarteners in the state, 55 percent or 80,303 attended all-day programs, while 45 percent (65,494 students) attended half-day programs. By 2006-07, with 147,440 kindergarteners, the percent in all-day programs inched up to 57 percent (83,425 students) as compared to 43 percent (64,015 students) enrolled in half-day programs.

Where are these students? A quick scan of the spreadsheets, which identify schools and counties, reveals that the majority of schools with half-day programs are found in Chicago, Cook County and its surrounding collar counties ... DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will. Pockets of half-day programs can be found in at least 10 other counties, but for the most part, downstate school boards have made the decision for all-day programs.

While money is always a determining factor in making decisions, when a district moves from half-day to all-day programs, the district's per pupil state aid increases for kindergarteners who have at least a four-hour day. According to the National Institute for Early Education Research, Illinois is one of a handful of states where all-day funding equals the money offered for first-grade students and is more than what is offered for half-day students. In many states, all kindergarten funding is less than first grade.

For those districts considering changes from one kindergarten system to another, the decision is not one that is taken lightly. To demonstrate what goes into the process, The Journal selected six Illinois districts, actually three pairs of neighboring districts, all of which have made decisions over the past few years that impacted their kindergarten programs. The pairs are:

• Arthur CUSD 305 and Tuscola CUSD 301, Douglas County
• Harvard CUSD 50 and Woodstock CUSD 200, McHenry County
• Indian Prairie CUSD 204 and Naperville CUSD 203, DuPage County

Here are their tales of decision making ...

In east Central Illinois, the communities of Arthur and Tuscola are separated by about 10 miles of farmland, as the crow flies. Their decisions to move to all-day kindergarten were separated by only two years. But when they looked at making the move, they really didn't look at what their neighbors were doing. Both boards decided on the basis of the educational opportunities they wanted to offer their students.

Travis Wilson, Arthur's superintendent, said his board's decision, made prior to the 2006-07 school year, was based on two things: reading and readiness. While the district's overall test scores do not put them in immediate jeopardy of not making annual yearly progress under NCLB, they wanted to start children out on a good foothold, especially in reading, rather than playing catch-up later.

Elementary teachers were the ones initially interested in all-day kindergarten, Wilson said. The administration then informed the board that they were doing the research as to what it would mean for the district.

Wilson said a survey of parents showed that 75 to 80 percent were interested in an all-day program from the outset. But when the administration submitted its survey data and other research, the board was still a bit hesitant.

"We had to convince the board about the rigidity of the program," Wilson said. "It was more of an issue to convince them that the day would be meaningful but relaxed."

And there were other considerations as well. When kindergarten was a half-day program, those teachers spent the other half of their day as reading teachers. In order to make up the difference in staff and keep the focus on reading, the district hired additional aides.

And although a few parents showed initial interest in staying with the half-day program, all of them ended up choosing the all-day program instead.

One of the biggest selling points for all-day kindergarten actually came from the name of one of the reading programs, according to Wilson: Reading Recovery.

"We didn't want to ‘recover,'" he said. "We wanted to be in a situation to start them out right from the beginning."

When Tim Meinhold ran for the Tuscola CUSD 301 board last spring, one of the planks in his platform was to look at the district's kindergarten program.

"I had spent time in the classroom and saw that kindergarten was not what it used to be," Meinhold said. "There was no down time in two and a half hours."

While the district's test scores don't reflect a problem (see the box on page 19), he believed a proactive stance to keep scores high could begin with all-day kindergarten. And the district's first-grade teachers agreed.

The principal at North Ward Elementary was instrumental in pulling together the data and research on all-day kindergarten, Meinhold said, and the discussion process before voting was "fairly painless." That's not to say, however, that there were not concerns ... the biggest of which was space.

While some adjustments will need to be made and an at-risk Pre-K program will need to be moved to a different space, the district actually anticipated all-day kindergarten when the new elementary school was built in 2001-02, according to Joe Burgess, district superintendent.

Burgess had few doubts that the board would approve the move to all-day kindergarten. "If it's been an academic need, they find a way" to provide whatever is needed, he said. "It was pretty easy for our board to see this was the direction to go."

"From our standpoint as the board of education," Meinhold added, "we always want to be perceived as an educational leader in the East Central region."

Even though test scores were not an immediate cause for concern, Burgess noted that the district's free and reduced lunch count has been rising. Because the correlation between that percentage and lower test scores can be "huge," he said, and because of a growing number of students already in full-day day care, the move to all-day kindergarten just made sense.

When it comes to talking about all-day and half-day kindergarten, Ellyn Wrzeski, superintendent at Woodstock CUSD 200, finds it difficult not to talk about the good and the bad of each option. Having come from a district in Iowa where all-day kindergarten has been in place for a number of years, Wrzeski was "shocked" not to find a similar program in her new district.

But she soon learned about the district's major barrier to an all-day program: space.

It's not that the district hasn't talked about going to all-day for nearly all of the six years he has been on the board, said Paul Meyer, board president. It's just a question of how and where to house an all-day program for upwards of 470 new 5-year-olds every year.

A facilities task force, a public engagement campaign and a successful referendum led to construction of a new elementary school and middle school that opened this past fall. That assistance with the district's space needs allowed the board to approve five all-day sections of kindergarten for the 2008-09 school year. This will be in addition to an existing all-day program for approximately 13 special education students and 10½ sections of half-day kindergarten.

The five all-day sections will have two English-only classes, two dual language classes and one bilingual class. Wrzeski said the community is "so excited" and more than 200 families have expressed an interest in the program ... so many that the district will have to conduct a lottery for the all-day slots.

Questions still remain as to how fast the all-day program will be allowed to grow. The district wants to make certain that it can sustain the initial programs, both financially and space-wise, without moving programs from building to building each year, Wrzeski said.

While the board has been extremely supportive of the move to all-day, the administration and the teachers are equally supportive, because for them, it's a gift of time. "This will give us the time to have more of a project approach and interactive learning," Wrzeski said.

"This doubles our instructional time with these children," Meyer added. "They'll be able to explore some things in depth that they hadn't been able to do."

About 10 miles north, the school board in neighboring Harvard CUSD 50 had to face some tough decisions regarding space and kindergarten programs this year as well. Swelling numbers of kindergarteners ... 208 incoming students in 2007-08 compared with their average of 170 ... forced the school board to make a very emotional, difficult decision: After seven years of all-day kindergarten, they're going back to half-day.

Lauri Tobias, director of education in Harvard, said the space crunch in all of Harvard's buildings has the district scrambling to find a place to house their growing number of students at all levels.

"We have looked everywhere for space," Tobias said, including empty commercial property belonging to Motorola and Wal-Mart. "To refit commercial property for a school takes a tremendous amount of money to meet the School Building Code and health and life safety requirements."

Asking voters to fund a building referendum requires time for the election process and, even if approved, delays a solution to the problem for two years or more while facilities are built.

"Everything in the school system boils down to dollars and cents," said Ken Book, who has been Harvard board president for the past five and a half years, "and you only have so much space to utilize."

While the district has some 30-year-old mobile units, the board couldn't justify using tax dollars to buy more units when it would rather put those dollars toward bricks and mortar and a permanent solution.

"With all that information," Tobias said, "the board said, ‘What about half-day kindergarten?'"

The decision was painful for the board and the community. Parents were vocal, Tobias said, because it also means the discontinuation of a dual language program at the kindergarten level. There just isn't time in half a day.

"Any time you make a change," Book said, "it's a tough decision."

While a task force continues to look at options that will help solve the district's spatial needs, Book takes some comfort in advice from a former, now-deceased, Harvard board member: "You're going to make a decision based on the facts as they're handed to you."

While emotional and possibly unpopular, the board made its decision based on the information it had and what was best for students as a whole. That doesn't make it any easier. "People don't realize what we have to go through," Book said.

When it comes to the question of offering half-day or all-day kindergarten, parents can be very vocal. In Naperville CUSD 203, the majority of parents want to keep kindergarten at half-day. And the board has obliged.

Before she was elected to the board in 2003, current board president Suzyn Price said she "casually" mentioned to a group of mothers that the district might talk about all-day kindergarten and they were "incensed."

Kathy Klees, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said parents were surveyed several years ago regarding kindergarten, and at that time they were not requesting, nor did they want an all-day program in the district that serves nearly 19,000 students, 1,019 of whom are in kindergarten.

But that's not to say the district does not have a bit of all-day instruction for 5-year-olds. The district has two full-day, or what they consider extended day, options: one targeting English Language Learners (ELL students) and another for students identified as being developmentally delayed, Klees said. The latter are in a program at a special education site.

All elementary schools in the district house half-day programs, which means 44 sections and 27 teachers.

"We had several key points that confirmed our current kindergarten program," Price. Among those were:

• The amount of state revenue the district would generate by the switch (not deemed enough to offset the costs);
• The amount of space that would be needed to allow for multiple classrooms in each building;
• The K-Leap program that addresses special learning challenges;
• And the current all-day curriculum for ELL students.

Right now, Klees said, the district's facilities are not structured to handle an all-day program in every building. If that would be the recommendation, the district would need to redesign its structure or build more facilities, and it certainly would need to add more staff.

"Our program prepares (students) in an exceptional way for the first-grade experience," Klees added, including 20 minutes of both PE and music each week and 30 to 40 minutes of art each month.

And, at this point, testing also does not warrant any switch. Naperville's overall ISAT score for all grades is 94.2 percent that meet or exceed standards, the highest percentage of any of the six districts profiled in this article.

Indian Prairie CUSD 204 snuggles right up next to the western boundary of Naperville CUSD 203. But while they may share a common boundary, their decisions on kindergarten now are different. The current school year brought with it a pilot all-day kindergarten program at four Indian Prairie buildings. Next fall, the district will offer all-day programs in all of its buildings.

On July 1, 2007, Stephen Daeschner took over as superintendent of the district that has more than 28,000 students ... at least 1,900 of whom are kindergarteners. By its meeting in mid-August, the board had given a unanimous go-ahead for an all-day pilot program for at-risk students at Georgetown, Gombert, Longwood and McCarty elementary schools.

"Right out of the box we knew we wanted to do at-risk kids in all-day in a pilot," said Mark C. Metzger, board president. By September, with Curriculum Based Measurements in place, the board had instant feedback on student progress and the data was stunning, he added.

By late September, the superintendent was recommending, and the board was considering, an all-day kindergarten program for everyone.

One of the earliest supporters was board member Alka Tyle, who was born in India. She knew from personal experience that her native country started children in school for a much longer time than in the United States.

"In India, kindergarten is anywhere from four to six hours in most places," Tyle said. "Not only that, there is a concept of ‘lower kindergarten' and ‘upper kindergarten' for ages 4 and 5. Both are quite rigorous with high expectations in the core areas."

"The first night this was on the agenda," Metzger said, "parents were concerned because this was a change." The board heard arguments about small children being required to be at school all day and parents still wanting their 5-year-olds home with them part of the day.

In November, the board voted to move forward with Jenny Giambalvo, a former principal and 20-year district employee, as all-day kindergarten coordinator. She led a committee of educators representing different interests, human relations, curriculum and business officials to finalize what a new all-day curriculum would look like, as well as to recruit and hire new teachers. They also developed a presentation so that parents could make an informed decision regarding whether to place their child in the all-day program.

The most parents asking to continue with a half-day program, Metzger said, were 16 in one building. Requests in other buildings were mostly in the single digits. Because the state requires that districts offer a half-day option for parents who request it, the question that remains is how many schools will have a half-day option, he added.

"After spending two hours discussing how many students it would take in a building to consider a half-day program there," Metzger said, "we eventually realized what we were discussing was outside the board's box" and the number was left to the district staff.

With the pilot program, Giambalvo said, the district had two different models: one had students who repeated the same session in a different classroom for a double dose of content; the other students stayed in the same classroom all day with extended curriculum.

When the new all-day curriculum was recently unveiled, teachers could not have been more elated, she said. And apprehensive parents have been won over as well.

Giambalvo said one mother shared with her that she had been so apprehensive ... even shaking ... at the thought that her child had been chosen for the all-day pilot. "Now, she's the poster child for full-day kindergarten," she added, "praising the program for helping her help him to learn more."

The tales above reveal that boards use a variety of information supplied by their administrators as well as their own conversations with their various publics before coming to important decisions like that of kindergarten programs. While districts may be close in geography, they can differ greatly in the decisions that they make based on what they believe is best for their students and the resources available at the time.

Whatever the decision, then-Governor of Mississippi Ronnie Musgrove may have summed it up best in his 2003 state-of-the-state address when he had this to say about early learning:

"Giving our children the opportunity to succeed — giving them a good education — still remains the best hope for lifting us to greater heights."

The decision about that "best way" rests with local boards of education, who can only hope that those decisions are reflected in Dickens' last line in A Tale of Two Cities:

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done ... ."

Kathy Christie, "Pay Now — Or Pay Later," Phi Delta Kappan, September 2003

Illinois State Board of Education, Fall Housing Reports, available at http://www.isbe.net/research/htmls/fall_housing.htm

Dianne Rothenberg, "Full-Day Kindergarten Programs," 1995 ERIC Digest

Julie Saam and Jeffrey A. Nowak, "The Effects of Full-Day Versus Half-Day Kindergarten on the Achievement of Students with Low/Moderate Income Status," Journal of Research in Childhood Education, Fall 2005

Arthur CUSD 305
Enrollment: 482 students
Approximate # new K per year: 45
100 % white
17 % low income
Meet or exceed ISAT standards: 88.4 % overall
80 % reading, 97.1 % math in grade 3

Tuscola CUSD 301
Enrollment: 995 students
Approximate # new K per year: 80 (70 for 2007-08)
95 % white
22 % low income
Meet or exceed ISAT standards: 87.1 % overall
89.5 % reading, 96.1 % math in grade 3

Harvard CUSD 50
Enrollment: 2,395 students
Approximate # new K per year: 170 (208 for 2007-08)
45 % white, 50 % Hispanic
28.5 % low income
Meet or exceed ISAT standards: 71.8 % overall
65.5 % reading, 82.4 % math in grade 3

Woodstock CUSD 200
Enrollment: 6,390 students
Approximate # new K per year: 477
69 % white, 26 % Hispanic
30.7 % low income
Meet or exceed ISAT standards: 81.2 % overall
72.8 % reading, 90.2 % math in grade 3

Indian Prairie CUSD 204
Enrollment: 28,087 students
Approximate # new K per year: 1,900
66 % white, 15 % Asian
5.3 % low income
Meet or exceed ISAT standards: 92 % overall
89.9 % reading, 94.9 math in grade 3

Naperville CUSD 203
Enrollment: 18,449 students
Approximate # new K per year: 1,019
76.6 % white, 14.4 % Asian
5 % low income
Meet or exceed ISAT standards: 94.3 % overall
91 % reading, 96.4 % math in grade 3

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