Seamless day schools

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Narrator: Juily loves full day kindergarten almost more than her parents do. She attends J.F. Charmichael school in Waterloo, one of a number of schools in Ontario that have adopted the comprehensive seamless day program recommended in the report titled “With Our Best Future in Mind.” These family friendly schools provide a full seamless day of activities and learning for kindergarten and school aged children. Because the kindergarten years are a special phase of children’s development, classes are staffed with educator teams, with specialized knowledge of early learning and child development. The seamless day program works like this: children arrive between seven and nine a.m. and go home between 3 and 6 p.m. A team of two Early Childhood Educators and a teacher cover the day. One Early Childhood Educator greets children and families starting at 7 a.m., and stays until 2 p.m. The second Early Childhood Educator joins the class at 11 a.m. and remains to close the program at 6 p.m. The teacher’s time in the classroom begins around 9 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m., overlapping with both Early Childhood Educators. This allows the full team to plan the program and discuss the progress of individual children. The team approach means children spend their day with the same caring adults in a consistent play-based learning environment. Parents also receive information and updates on their child’s whole day. Parents and educators agree: with more time for play based learning, the children are learning more and are feeling less stressed. Parents also reap the benefits of the seamless day. 

Linda Gilbride, parent: We put him into the public school so
that we could have the extended day and we haven’t looked back, that was a great decision. It’s high-quality care for him at the end of the day. I like that it’s in the same building, he isn’t shuffled to another location. It’s open until six, which works with our schedule. It’s great, we’re really happy with it.

Narrator: Mangesh Vingkar moved to the school’s catchment area to have the seamless program for his daughter Juily.

Mangesh Vingkar, parent: It has really worked very good for my daughter Juily. She enjoys it a lot; in fact she doesn’t want to go home in the evening.

Grandparent, Ron Rausch: Well, one thing is the extended play and
how he interacts with the other children. I think that it’s helped
him socially incredibly.

Christie Nafziger, Early childhood educator, J. F. Carmichael Public School : I often find when children are transitioning from one program to another it can really bring about a lot of difficult behaviours, so it’s really nice to be able to stay in one place where the children do feel comfortable already and they’re comfortable with the materials and it just doesn’t have that interruption into their day.

Denise Gloade, Kindergarten teacher, J. F. Carmichael Public School : Too many transitions will cause anxiety in a child and it’s more difficult for them to focus on anything that they’re doing, so minimizing the number of transitions is very important. I think this program had
an impact on my relationship with parents in that I know their child so well. A few parents came to me after the report card went out and said “wow, you really know my child and their interests.”

Caroline Nichols, parent : My interaction with the staff of the program has been great. I feel like I can talk to them about anything. They always offer information about how Lucy’s day was or if anything happened, any concerns at all.

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Catherine Fife, Trustee, Waterloo Region District School Board; President, Ontario Public School Boards’ Association : Parents want the full day kindergarten to be in their school. They want it now, not tomorrow necessarily, and they really value that seamless transition that their children experience.

Mary Butler, Principal, J. F. Carmichael Public School : I think that finally we are starting to get it right about understanding about what young children need in order to be successful.

 (children talking)

Denise Gloade, Kindergarten teacher, J. F. Carmichael Public School :  Being able to work with an ECE teacher is one of the most amazing things that has ever happened in my career, because of their ideas and their expertise in knowing how to engage kids in that play.

Scott Podrebarac, System Administrator for Early Learning Waterloo Region District School Board : Our Early Childhood Educators are our own staff. They’re part of the school staff. They get to know the families in a really deep ways, and they create the connections between the core day and the extended day.

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Narrator: The seamless day is not taxing the school’s resources; it is making better use of what the school already has.

Mary Lou Mackie, Executive Superintendent Waterloo Region District School Board : We have the facility, we have the space, we’re making use of existing space. All of those things, I think, make it a more viable model, and make it a model that makes it more accessible for more families more often.

Scott Podrebarac, System Administrator for Early Learning Waterloo Region District School Board : So we have some school where there are waiting
lists of over a hundred and twenty parents who can’t get in to the existing third party programs because they are licensed for only thirty or forty kids. When we go into that school we can meet that demand, all hundred and twenty parents because we have five or six or seven kindergarten rooms we can use, and we can just hire the ECE staff very quickly to meet the demand in a program. So there are real advantages to us offering the program that result in better service for parents.

 (child yelling)

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Narrator : Parents and educators are happily discovering that the children’s literacy and social development have been greatly advanced by the seamless day.

Caroline Nichols, parent : I don’t think that the learning
stops at the end of the school day. I think that they continue on and you know use the same philosophies. I mean, I’ve definitely seen vast improvements in her level of reading, writing, you know even interested in math.

Mary Butler, Principal, J. F. Carmichael Public School : We have a benchmark for reading in our board, and our students in kindergarten used to be about 26% would reach the benchmark. This year we’re going to be at 67 to 70% of our students reading at or well beyond the benchmark that we expect. (child reading out loud) And the wonderful thing about that is, that the children, because of the full day, still have way more opportunity, much more opportunity than they used to play.

Narrator : The cost for parents is comparable to childcare programs in the community. Subsidies are available for those families who qualify. The fact that staff knows and understands each child better thanks to the seamless day means that special needs are recognized early, and acted upon.

Mary Lou Mackie, Executive Superintendent Waterloo Region District School Board : Number one, we’re getting at children when their brains are still
in the early developments stages, and there’s tons of research out there that talks about the way the brain is forming at that young age, and the impact that early learning has on brain development, and the future that that brain development has in terms of the child’s eventual outcome. So I think by having access, by being able to deliver a comprehensive program that’s consistent from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. That’s working with the same adults, that’s creating that environment of care around those children. I think that’s really in the end what’s going to make the greatest difference. And of course, it also gives us a sense of where the needs are for children too at a pretty young age. So if we’re seeing children who are coming to us and they’re having some difficulties, it gives us an opportunity to do an early identification and to start to provide those interventions much, at a much younger age.

Narrator : The seamless day certainly has implications for administrators. The Waterloo District Region School Board created a new position to coordinate the program it its schools. 

Scott Podrebarac, System Administrator for Early Learning Waterloo Region District School Board : The school board embraces this because
you have a sense that it works for kids, and ultimately at the end of the day, that’s what we’re here for. We are here for the kids and their families.

Mary Butler, Principal, J. F. Carmichael Public School : Because of the way it’s staffed, it honestly hasn’t added a lot to my job. I wold certainly say to other principals that although it’s a fear that you have, and it’s certainly I think is across the Province, it is unfounded. It certainly has been in my experience unfounded.

Linda Fabi, Director of Education, Waterloo Region District School Board : One of the strategies that has ensured the success for the full day and extended day program is that our board of trustees have fully embraced this direction, and they’ve embraced it, I believe, because our staff has kept trustees involved in every step of the way.

Catherine Fife, Trustee, Waterloo Region District School Board; President, Ontario Public School Boards’ Association : When you talk to parents in this community, they think of this school as their school: they own it, they paid for you, you know there’s definitely a connection there that sort of faltered there over the years. So what the full day kindergarten and the extended day programming has the potential to do is to open the school to the community more broadly, which in turn has a positive effect on the way people feel about public education. Down the road it makes a stronger case for continued investment in public education because there’s a shared ownership for it.

Mary Lou Mackie, Executive Superintendent Waterloo Region District School Board : It’s so worth it. I mean, when you think about the long term impact of education on children and youth, and I mean, you see that in so many different forms: when you look at mental health studies, when you look at kids at risk, when you look at child and youth and substance abuse, all those issues that tend to be troublesome for us, the key comes down to early intervention and early access to good childcare programming. Now I don’t want to suggest for a minute that there aren’t a lot of great third party providers out there, because there are, but the big advantage that we have is that parents can bring them to our school, our schools are in every community, so it’s not just in some neighbourhoods but not in others; we have the potential to offer it in every neighbourhood and make it accessible to everyone, and I think when you think about it from that accessibility point of view, and the potential long term implications of early intervention that I think this provides, it’s going to be altering for our society. To me this is almost the single most important thing we have ever done to improve student outcomes, and I fundamentally believe that. 

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Narrator : For more information on family friendly seamless day
schools, see our website www.oise.utoronto.ca/atkinson