Kindergarten slowly expands
Burnaby Now
Jun 20 2009
By: Jennifer Moreau

The Burnaby school district will add one more class to its full-day kindergarten experiment, but that's all until there are enough students with attached funding to help cover the costs of expanding the program.

The school district started the full-day kindergarten pilot project last year, with three classes at Maywood Elementary and one at Morley Elementary.

The rationale was to help kids with limited skills in literacy, emergent language, English language and general knowledge. The new class will be at Morley and will start in September.

Normally, the Ministry of Education pays for kids to stay in kindergarten for half-days only. Some categories of children are eligible for full-day funding: aboriginal, English as a second language and special needs. Since the neighbourhoods surrounding Morley and Maywood already have large populations of English language learners, most of the kids in full-day kindergarten were covered by ministry funding.

The provincial government recently released a report on the feasibility and costs of full-day kindergarten and full-day preschool for three- and four-year-olds. Estimates suggest the ministry would need 1,000 new teachers to run full-day kindergarten and 4,000 new early childhood educators to run full-day preschool.

Depending on the program, costs could range from $20 million to $1 billion….