Connellsville Area to change kindergarten age in 2019-20
The Connellsville Area School District will adopt a new age requirement for students entering kindergarten beginning in the 2019-20 school year.
The longtime provision requiring children to be 5 years old by the first day of school — which usually hovers around the last week of August — will cease when the district begins requiring children to be 5 years old by June 1 in order to start school in the fall.
Interim Superintendent David McDonald said Connellsville wants to be consistent with other area districts that have adjusted their kindergarten ages, as well as with a wider trend that is occurring in education.
“We’re trying to give kids a couple more months of maturity, identifying them a little bit sooner when they come into kindergarten,” said McDonald.
The Pennsylvania School Code gives a school board authority to establish the age at which a child can begin kindergarten. The Connellsville Area School Board approved the change at its most recent meeting.
The three-month shift means children will likely range in age from 5 years, 3 months to 6 years, 3 months when they enter kindergarten at the start of the school year.
McDonald said the district has found that kindergarten students are often immature from both an academic and social standpoint and that teachers report spending an exorbitant amount of time reviewing simple social tasks and skills.
“We have a large population of students that the first time they’re exposed to a school setting is the first day of kindergarten,” said McDonald, adding that students’ collective range of skill sets is wide.
Therefore, early identification of students is optimal because the district operates transition camps during the summer to help prepare struggling students for kindergarten. The three-week camps, intended for students who identify on a placement test during kindergarten registration as needing additional assistance, will help them foster simple skills.
McDonald said the age change is part of a wider push towards improving early childhood education efforts in Connellsville, which also includes strengthening partnerships with Head Start and Pre-K Counts programs administered within the district.
“We’re trying to use all the resources that we can so that when kids walk in Day 1 they have some sort of foundation,” McDonald said.