A musical phone alarm went off in Sharon Gray’s classroom — a cue that it was time for students to switch to a new activity station.
“Boys and girls, remember how we’re learning about rotating?” she said to the soon-to-be kindergartners at her table. “Where do you guys get to go?”
A little boy answered immediately. “The park!” he said.
The correct answer was actually the block table at the other end of the orange-carpeted room, but such trial and error was part of the weeklong Jump Start program at Peiffer Elementary in Colorado’s Jeffco school district.
Paid for with federal stimulus dollars, the summer transition program is among a host of initiatives school districts are launching this year as they prepare to welcome a new crop of children to classrooms after more than a year of disrupted schooling — and in some cases, no formal schooling at all. District leaders also plan to reduce class sizes, add coaches and intervention teachers, and provide tutoring.
Many experts fear the youngest students could face the most substantial social and academic gaps, both because pandemic upheaval came during a critical time in their development and because thousands of children didn’t attend preschool and kindergarten last year as they normally would have.
In Colorado, the biggest K-12 enrollment drops last year occurred in kindergarten, with a statewide decline of 7,000 students, or 9%. That matches national trends, including findings from a new Stanford University and New York Times analysis of 70,000 schools in 33 states.
Read the full story from our partners at chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit co.chalkbeat.org.
