For Kindergarteners, First Day Of School Won't Be What They (Or Their Parents) Dreamed About

Speaker 1: 00:00 Kindergarten is supposed to be a magical time for children, but now parents and teachers across the region are staring down the challenge of introducing kids to school without actually having them in a physical classroom and KPBS reported Clare triggers or tells us that is creating inequity from the very start of kids' school, careers, Maya Ramos, and Kaia. Kawasan spent the morning throwing water balloons at their older brothers, swimming in Kayla's pool, relaxing in the hot tub, and then climbing out to eat fruit and cookies. Yeah. Speaker 2: 00:38 Am I know definitely better. Speaker 1: 00:41 This is where the new kindergartners at Benchley Weinberger elementary in the San Carlos neighborhood will have their virtual kindergarten classes, their moms, Nicole Ramos, and Shavasana. Kawasan formed a learning pod together and hired a private tutor to help them follow their online lessons. CogniZen says in some ways this will be better than if the kids were in normal kindergarten. So maybe this is a way for us to be creative and read, Speaker 2: 01:08 Imagine the whole education process. Um, so I'm excited about that. I feel like that's a rebirth of something. So maybe in all of this, there's something good that's coming out of it. Speaker 1: 01:18 A few miles away in North park. Danielle Hernandez is facing a far different reality just to not know what's going to happen. She works full time and her daughter, Jasmine will start kindergarten at Jefferson elementary in North park Hernandez. His plan is for her mother to stay with Jasmine and help her do her online lessons. But she's worried that won't work out well. If I, if I can come up with a schedule, she's gonna sit in front of the computer and probably get behind because she does. She's not going to have that support, you know? Yeah. My mom will be there, but it's not the same thing as having a professional sit next to her and teacher and give her the one Oh one. Even if the computer just goes in a sleep mode, you know, it's, it's hard. Sometimes when somebody that doesn't have that experience, then it's going to cost frustration, stress, Ramos, whose kids are going to be in the pod with a private tutor, says she's keenly aware of the inequity. The pandemic is creating Speaker 2: 02:20 The big challenge that we have in like, what role do we play in sort of helping solve inequity as people who have, you know, resources, Speaker 1: 02:28 Regardless of their status kindergarteners and their families will arguably be impacted more than any other grade. By online learning this fall, they have little to no experience in a regular school environment, let alone in a virtual space with the distractions of home. It won't be easy for teachers, either Jana Wilson, who has taught kindergarten for most of her 21 year career in Lamesa is planning a daily schedule with a live video call from eight to nine, where she'll go over the calendar, read a story and talk about the letter of the day at the beginning. You know, I think we're being very ambitious and thinking that we're going to be on for an hour. It's going to be a very long time. But at the same time, I think our thought process is if we break up that hour in a way that includes some fun songs or activities or, you know, okay, get up and stretch and jump around. Speaker 1: 03:23 The plan is to limit the length of the online sessions and mix in old school activities like craft projects that the kids will do offline. She'll also pre-record math and other important lessons. I might be a, probably a really optimistic, you know, and maybe a little naive as to how challenging this really might be. But I think, um, you know, it's part of kindergarten too, like, you know, it's always a brand new experience. And so I kind of feel like that for us, isn't all that different, you know, there's, you know, I think kindergarten teachers are a special breed in that sense that we always kind of anticipate the crazy and the unknown still Wilson acknowledges that parents or another adult are going to need to be with the kindergartners to help them with the crafts and activities, at least for the first six weeks. But of course, that's not an option for many families. One kid obviously didn't have a parent in the room. So I kept going, like, here's my dinosaur. Speaker 1: 04:27 I want to tell you about my sister and the teacher didn't know how to mute. My daughter had meltdowns, Myra, you Sophie's daughter, Fatemia already started virtual kindergarten in San Marcos. We can address challenges, but it's been really bad. Now she's ready to pull her daughter out of school entirely. But you know, this is going to give her more anxiety about school like this. The whole introduction to the school is, you know, is kindergarten. And I don't want her to have longterm anxiety about going to school about, about the whole process. She's toying with the idea of switching to homeschooling or having her daughter skip kindergarten. Completely. Other parents are also opting out of public school, side and sauna. Aberdeen son Harris was finishing at magic hours, preschool in Mira Mesa. And they had planned to send him to public school kindergarten. This fall now magic hours announced it was offering kindergarten. It became almost like a no brainer to us. We really trust them. We know that they maintain good care and cleanliness and hygiene process. Of course the Aberdeen's we're looking forward to eliminating the cost of preschool this year $310 a week at magic hours, but decided it was worth it to pay for another year. They are lacking that social environment. They don't have Speaker 3: 05:58 A kids' lives to interact with in the long run. They will miss out, but there could be unintended consequences. Speaker 1: 06:05 If a large number of parents decide not to enroll their kindergarteners in public schools, Speaker 3: 06:11 It would cause an enrollment dip and Speaker 1: 06:14 Drop in state funding to districts, Maureen McGee, a San Diego unified spokeswoman says the district won't have final enrollment numbers until October. Joining me is KPBS investigative reporter Claire, sir. And Claire. Welcome. Thank you. Now let's step back. If we can and remind us what the purpose of kindergarten is supposed to be is a glorified daycare, or is there a larger purpose? I know for parents who are switching from a preschool to a public school, it's, you know, they're looking forward to the opportunity to not pay a tuition anymore because public school is free. But I think going back, you know, kindergarten has become more and more an important part of school where it used to be a shorter day. Now it's now it's a full day. Um, and it's really about getting kids started on school, used to being in a classroom, you know, used to, uh, having structure to their day and being with a whole group of other kids, maybe for some kids they've never been to preschool or a daycare. Speaker 1: 07:20 So this is their first introduction to being around a lot of other kids and learning how to interact and share and, um, negotiate and all of those things that come for for young children. So when you point out the inequities and how different families can approach virtual kindergarten, it may, it could have some real life consequences for kids in the future. Yeah. I mean, it seems, it seems like that is the big concern because you know, the kids who are maybe going to have a private tutor and be part of a pod that they're going to be starting off their school careers with some of that structure, with that interaction with, with other kids, uh, getting used to being away from their parents may be because they're going to be with the tutor. You know, if it takes six months or something for San Diego unified schools to open the kids who have been in these kindergartens with tutors, or are going to start classes and know more about how to be in, in a classroom setting than the kids, who've, who've just been at home and their parents are maybe trying to have them follow lessons over zoom or, or something like that. Speaker 1: 08:30 Now the types of virtual daily school activities that a kindergarten teacher like Jane Wilson is planning. Can children do them pretty much on their own or will they need an adult to help them? I mean, that was, that was my question. When, when I was speaking with her, she was talking about doing a craft project, you know, maybe the letter the day is a, and so you're going to be cutting out and coloring in an alligator, um, to talk about the letter and also folk work on the fine motor skills of cutting coloring gluing. I have a three year old and I thought, well, you know, maybe there's a lot of development, which I'm sure there is between three and five, but I can't picture him being able to sit in a room alone and, uh, cut out anything and glue it. And, and she said, at least for the first six weeks, her expectation or her feeling is that a parent or an adult really is going to need to be there, um, to help with that and that, and she said that that also, um, brings up kind of a concern because after six weeks she would like to begin to transition kids to doing things without that adult supervision and direct one on one help. Speaker 1: 09:40 Um, so, you know, there's, there's the double edged thing there of, uh, needing an adult there in the beginning when maybe some kids aren't going to have an adult available to give them complete undivided one-on-one attention. And then for the kids that do sh she's gonna have to try and get them away from having that adult watching over everything that they're doing within a month or two of of school. Speaker 4: 10:07 Now you talked with a parent who got so concerned about how her child was reacting to at home kindergarten, that she's thinking about having her kid skip kindergarten entirely. Can parents do that? And how does that work? Speaker 1: 10:21 Yeah, I mean, talking to her was very interesting because she really went into it. She, because she's in San Marcos, um, they've already started school, whereas much of the rest of the region hasn't started yet. And she went into it full of optimism and said, you know, my kid is an easy going kid. I think this'll be fine. And after three days she said it was so frustrating for her daughter that she was ready to just quit the whole thing entirely. And actually yes, in California, kindergarten is optional. The, the law is that kids need to be in school once they're six. And so I think you could have a kid who's turning six, maybe during the year, over the summer. And then they would just start first grade, um, and not go to kindergarten or the parents could decide they'll just be an older kindergarten or, and, um, and start kindergarten next year. Speaker 4: 11:17 Okay. So now that San Diego was off the state COVID watchlist, does that mean more schools will be open for in-person kindergarten? Speaker 1: 11:26 Well, it depends on the district because, um, so private schools can open already private, some private elementary schools have applied for waivers, but once we're off the watch list for 14 days, um, private schools can open some school districts can make the decision to open, but the, the decision is really up to the district. And San Diego unified has said, we're not going to be opening. As soon as we're off the list, they have their own, a list of metrics that they want to have met before their opening schools. So parents with kids who are supposed to start kindergarten at a San Diego unified school are going to be dealing with this for a lot longer. I've been speaking with KPBS, investigative reporter, Claire triglyceride, and Claire. Thank you very much. Thank you. Speaker 5: 12:22 [inaudible].