Evergreen district kindergarten classes go all day, every day | OregonLive.com

Evergreen district kindergarten classes go all day, every day | OregonLive.com

Evergreen district kindergarten classes go all day, every day

Published: Friday, September 03, 2010, 3:00 PM

Elliot Njus, The Oregonian
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Doug Beghtel/The OregonianBrenda Parker welcomes her kindergarten students to their first day of school at Orchards Elementary School in Vancouver and begins teaching her students how to raise their hand when they have something to say. Kindergarten students will be in class from 9:15 a.m. to 3:35 p.m. like the other students.

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Lois Hinkley started teaching kindergarten so she could work half days, giving her more time to spend with her daughter.

Two years later, she found herself working full days again -- still teaching kindergarten, but in one of the first classes in a state-funded, full-time kindergarten program.

The difference, Hinkley said, was marked. While she might have expected children in half-day classes to write two or three sentences on a given subject, the full-time students could write a page or more.

"You really notice it right away," she said. "When you see them in October, you think, 'Wow, this is where they usually are in January.'"

The experience at Orchards Elementary School in northeast Vancouver, where Hinkley taught, and two others in Evergreen Public Schools persuaded the district to switch from half-time kindergarten to all-day, every-day classes this fall at all of its 21 elementary schools.

Kindergartners' first day of school Wednesday was Evergreen's first for full-time across the