NEGAUNEE -- Ms. Scanlon's kindergarten classes at Lakeview Elementary cover a wide range of subjects in a week, but the Negaunee school's part-time classes can only do so much.
"Sometimes its frustrating we're giving them a little smathering of everything and not able to expand on it," said Ms. Scanlon.
But with the recent state mandate on kindergarten hours, officials say that's all about to change.
Last summer, Governor Rick Snyder signed a bill to make all Michigan schools hold full day sessions, every day, starting in September.
That means adding two more teachers at Lakeview, at a cost of $150,000, but if they don't go to full six hour days, they'll lose a half a million dollars in state funding.
"If we're going to lose half the funding for those students that's a huge hit financially for us so budget wise it makes more sense all day every day," said Negaunee Public Schools Superintendent Jim DeRocher.
And teachers agree.
Normally students would work on only one letter per week but with more days in the classroom they can add more words to their vocabulary.
It will also add time for intervention... students that struggle early on can be helped sooner rather than later...
"The earlier we reach the students that are having reading problems the better off they are and so we're going to be able to get into a lot of these intervention strategies and work that into our children and hopefully were gonna see those benefits in first grade, second grade and on," Scanlon says.
"The benefits for the students are there if it wasn't a financial hardship for the district we would probably have been all day everyday a long time ago," added DeRocher.
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