Elementary Schools in Loudoun

This is for parents who understand the Loudoun County Elementary School system as we are new to this system.

Why are there two Kindergarten times (AM / PM) set up in the elementary schools? Fairfax County, my friends there tell me, has Kindergarten set up from 9A to 3P...wonder why Loudoun is half day for the kids?

Secondly, why are the elementary schools beginning roughly at 750 in the morning? I noticed that some elementary schools start later...with some starting an hour later and HS begins at 9AM....why the variance?

Could someone shed some light on this topic to me so I can better understand why the differences in times between Loudoun/Fairfax as well as between HS and Elementary in Loudoun not to mention the need to have an AM/PM section?

Many thanks!

 

Cap, are the 6th graders waking you up from your slumber in the morning? Or are the kindergardners getting out of control and waking you up from that afternoon nap?

I have no idea, just poking

 

:rolleyes3: You are really devilish, alright. I'll give you dat!

 

Can't speak to why Loudoun doesn't have full day kindergarten, but having the elementary students begin their day at the earliest start time enables high school aged students, who stay up later, to get a bit of extra sleep in the morning. Fairfax, i believe, operates under the notion that HS students earlier dismissal affords them the opportunity to get to after school jobs and allows their athletic teams to begin practice at an earlier time. As the parent of a HS student, I think Loudoun gets it right!

 

I think there are too many children in Loudoun county for all day kindergarten. Which is why we keep having to rezone the schools every couple of years and why we keep building new schools.

As for the early start for HS, I think Loudoun starts later so the kids could help out on the farm before school began.

 

I think the half day AM/PM program was instituted because it was determined that there werent enough classrooms for KG - I'm guessing this was during the time a few years ago when Loudoun had the distinction of being one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. A couple of years ago there was some talk about making Loudoun KG a full day program - but economy and budget issues nipped that in the bud.

Also, I have heard from parents who need to leave early for work, that they prefer the early elementary start - they dont have to worry about before-school care.

 

FWIW, I think this is the first year that ALL Fairfax schools have full day KG. When the economy tanked, I gave up hope that we would go that way in Loudoun.

The early elementary start time is much more convenient for working parents. And there are studies that show that teenagers are naturally night owls, and early HS start times interfere with their natural sleep rhythms. Guess that's why the schedules are the way they are.

 

Thanks to all...this was rather interesting and teenagers being teenagers, that makes sense. I remember when I was in HS, the early hours were the bane of my hs years. I hated those hours....ugh. But I guess the administrators wisened up over the years...Guess the Fast Times at Ridgemont High movie woke them up! LOL

 

I don't know about you, but all I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine

 

And Fairfax has that incredibly stupid and working parent hostile "half day Monday" situation. I can't understand how parents tolerate that.

 

I think half a day is plenty at 5 years old.

 

It probably really depends on the child. My son missed the kindergarten cutoff by 2 weeks and was really needing a full-day program when he finally started the following year. We ended up having to pay for a K enrichment program to provide him with the full-day experience he needed.

 

I'm pretty sure that virtually every study of student achievement shows that full day kindergarten, which, let's face it, is really 6 hours, is VASTLY more beneficial than half day. In fact, half day doesn't accomplish much more than a good preschool.

 

Uh.... my kids are in college now I can honestly say that 1/2 day didn't hurt them at all. In the end none of that stuff matters.

 

Amen!

 

Vs.

Survey Says (well, at least one officially sanctioned study)

Cliff notes:

Effectiveness of full- and half-day programs. We evaluated program effectiveness by how much children learned in mathematics and literacy over the kindergarten year. We measured learning as end-of-theyear achievement, adjusted for initial achievement, on standardized tests that were un-timed, adaptive, individually administered. Results are clear: When children's social and academic backgrounds are taken into account, as well as structural, social, and academic features of their schools, children who experience fullday kindergarten as a whole-school program are advantaged in terms of their cognitive learning (effects of 0.93 between-school SD in literacy and 0.75 between-school SD in mathematics). Where does this advantage come from? Although full-day kindergartners spend twice as much time in school as their half-day counterparts, and these children experience more time devoted to instruction in full-day classes, clearly all the additional time is not spent on instruction. Teachers of full-day kindergarten classes report spending about only one-third more time on instruction than those who teach half-day classes. The additional learning is certainly associated with this added time on instruction; however, we acknowledge that there are many worthwhile activities in kindergarten classes beyond formal instruction in academic subjects. Teachers of full-day kindergarten use the additional time with their students to broaden their social as well as their academic experiences. Considering the full specification of our analytic models (i.e., a wide range of controls for characteristics of both children and schools, as well as the multilevel analysis methods we used), we argue that our findings of a substantial learning boost for kindergarten children in full-time compared to half-time classes and schools are important in their own right and have important implications for early education policy.​

 

I think the few extra hours spent with me were far more important than any temporary "advantage" found by some study.

 

At this point, I don't care about half day versus full day (although full would be preferable it's not happening). What I do think is absolutely ridiculous is that Hillside parents still don't know if their kids are on am or pm schedule for kindergarten which is starting in two weeks and a couple of days.

I'm sitting on three doctor's appointments that I can't schedule until we find out - while the chiropractor and the dentist are delayable, the neuropsychologist isn't.

When I called LCPS Transportation last month once we finally got off the year and a half wait list for this appointment, the attitude I got was that if I wanted to know, I should put my kid into private kindergarten or I should just pull my kid out of school for the entire day for her sister's appointment or I should ask a total stranger to watch my kid. I was also told that they might not know until a week after school starts as they are still moving kids around. This is not acceptable. I understand that Hillside is the overflow school for the entire Briar Woods cluster and that there are dozens of kids being bussed there from Creighton's Corner but this is not the 1950s when it didn't matter if you didn't know until the day before school starts.

 

I believe that currently there are only 2 counties in VA that have half day kindergarten (Loudoun being one of them) with the present situation of over-flow and crazy boundaries, half day will be the norm....until at least the state mandates full day....think what THAT will do to our boundaries...glad my kids are all grown!

 

I was told a couple of years ago before the economy tanked that Loudoun was looking into full-day K but were having bus issues.........they couldn't get that many additional kids to school in the morning and home in the afternoon. Either the capital expenditures or actually ordering the buses, I'm not sure. At the time, space wasn't an issue but Legacy & Creighton weren't overcrowded back then like they are now.

My family prefers the early ES start times because we can get the younger ones to daycare and to work at a reasonable time. The HS kids can theoretically take care of themselves and get to school at 9am without too much parental involvement. And Ffx's 1/2 day Monday schedule would drive me CRAZY.