Peggy Revell
North Star Public School and St. Patrick’s in Atikokan will be two of the roughly 600 schools across the province to see full-day junior kindergarten pilot projects for the 2010-11 school year.
“We’re excited to be able to bring the early learning program to Northwestern Ontario,” said Mary-Catherine Kelly, director of education for the Northwest Catholic District School Board.
“We’re pleased that the proposal has been accepted to let St. Patrick’s be our pilot.
“We have very experienced staff there, and a community that I think will embrace this opportunity, and we look forward to making it a great success for the students,” Kelly enthused.
“All-day learning is a wonderful concept in the context of new teaching practices,” said Jack McMaster, director of education for the Rainy River District School Board.
“The [board] has experienced the great opportunities of all-day senior kindergarten for four years and welcomes the expansion for junior kindergarten students,” he added.
As part of this new initiative, parents will have the option of enrolling their child in an extended program that provides before and after-school programming, for a fee, with subsidies available based on need.
The program will be composed of both teachers and early childhood educators, with roughly 26 kids per classroom, according to the province.
The Ontario government first announced plans to implement this full-day junior kindergarten program back in October, with both the local public and Catholic boards each allocated one pilot program class for the upcoming school year.
During November, both boards consulted with each other, local day care providers, “Best Start” networks, municipalities, and Social Services Administration Boards before submitting their choices to the Ministry of Education before Christmas—choices that were publicly approved and announced yesterday by the provincial government.
“We felt that it would really serve the [Atikokan] community well to offer that full-day programming,” Kelly said of the decision for the program to first run in Atikokan.
“We do have a good partnership with the day care already,” she noted.
As well, St. Patrick’s has experience in offering the full-day kindergarten program (albeit like many schools, it is on alternating days).
For the 2011/12 school year, both local school boards each have been allocated another pilot project class by the government—and plan to have these ones phased in at Fort Frances locations.
“Next year we’ll be looking at the Fort Frances area, and that will be a larger jurisdiction and more day cares to enter into with,” Kelly remarked. “So that’s why it was also good to choose Atikokan first because it was a smaller population base, too.
“That way, we can try the program out first and that will give us another year to work with our stakeholders in the day care business to try to work out a good scenario and a good working relationship so we can make it work well in the Fort Frances and area community,” she reasoned.
The province plans to have the full-day junior kindergarten program fully phased in across the province by 2015/16 school year.
