District 41 faces challenges in all-day kindergarten talks

There's support for an all-day kindergarten program among administrators in Glen Ellyn Elementary District 41, but they caution there will be some major challenges - both in terms of cost and space - to implement it at their four schools.

Superintendent Paul Gordon told school board members this week the district received 642 responses to a community survey on the topic, including 374 from parents of future kindergartners.

Roughly 69 percent of those respondents said they support all-day kindergarten.

One of the challenges to pursuing such plans involves a lack of space at district schools. Principals from all four schools told the board how they plan to use available space next year and how those plans would change if there was a need to house all-day kindergarten classes.

Lincoln Principal Linda Schweikhofer said such a program would force her to move music and art classes back into undersized classrooms and would leave no space for teachers to collaborate. Some students, she said, would be forced to eat lunch outside of the school's lunchroom/gymnasium.

If Lincoln eventually needed more classroom space to handle increased enrollment, she said, there wouldn't be room for all-day kindergarten unless other class sizes were increased.

Principals at the other three schools presented a similar narrative.

Franklin Principal Kirk Samples said making room for all-day kindergarten would cost the school an area where staff members currently take breaks and work.

Class sizes also would increase if Franklin hit certain enrollment levels, he said.

Churchill Principal Scott Klespitz said there's not enough space at his school to house all-day kindergarten classes.

And at Forest Glen, Principal Mary Hornacek said she would have to move some first-graders to the library and her staff would lose a work room. If enrollment increases to certain levels, she said, there wouldn't be room for all-day kindergarten.

Officials are considering several options to address those concerns. One possibility is to build a new school.

"Part of this is really to demonstrate ... that we believe (even) without full-day kindergarten that our facilities are overstrained and by adding more students, it only exacerbates the situation," Gordon said.

He said administrators will ask the board on Nov. 24 if they can hire FGM Architects to explore other space options to support all-day kindergarten classes, potentially including the possibility of building an early childhood center.

Some board members said they want to see if current facilities could be reconfigured to support full-day kindergarten, but member Erica Nelson said that's probably not the answer.

"I think what we're doing is, we're on a hamster wheel conversation again because what we're still doing is trying to take space that is not built for 500-plus students," Nelson said.