Kindergarten FAQ

Hours mirror a standard academic day, 8:15-2:45, Monday-Friday, with a 40-minute lunch and recess break. The full-day kindergarten program follows this format with a subsequent extended mid-day break. To provide for a consistent educational program, a five-day attendance commitment, Monday-Friday, is required for all kindergarten students.

While some families may recognize a commitment toward half-day programming, the option for a standard half-day session is available Monday-Friday. Busing, however, is not available for half-day programming. Full-day and half-day students will be enrolled in the same classrooms, so that students leaving or arriving mid-day will not greatly affect class demographics, culture and composition. Principals work closely with families to ensure academic needs are addressed.

A team of educators, including kindergarten teaching staff support personnel in Social Work, Math Intervention, Reading Intervention and Speech-Language Pathology, as well as outside consultants from local full-day centers, have worked together to design a program that enhances instructional programming, focuses on reading, writing, mathematics, science and social studies that is paced throughout the academic day. In addition, the program offers physical education, art and music programming, as well as ongoing social skill enrichment, creative exploration and structured play.

Before-and-after school busing is offered to full-day kindergarten students who qualify for transportation or families who pay for transportation services.  The routes for kindergarten matches standard first through fifth grade routes and bus stops currently established.

Similar to current practice, lunch is offered as an optional purchase or students may bring a  lunch from home.  Milk will be offered for purchase.  Please note some families may qualify for free and reduced lunch and will need to apply for financial assistance.   

As expectations of the new Illinois Learning and Next Generation Science Standards the reform for teaching and learning of the kindergarten curriculum has shown advanced rigor. Kindergarten Common Core language standards can be accessed via the following website address: www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/ Kindergarten Common Core mathematics standards can be accessed via the following website address: www.corestandards.org/Math/ In addition, there continued to be requests to expand the offering for children who attended the District 70 half-day kindergarten program.

Offering an extension of kindergarten that would provide academic and social assistance that support and extend learning concepts and enrich social developmental practices was a critical topic brought about during the Strategic Planning session. While many local Districts offered a full-day option, the districts surrounding Libertyville were viewed as those with one-school systems (Kdg-8th grade housed on one district site) or grade-based centers (schools of Kdg-2nd grade configuration) that allowed for easy placement of additional personnel, staffing and classroom allocations. Creating a program that offered full day kindergarten at all four school sites in District 70 was viewed as both complicated and in depth. In working to sustain public interest in maintaining a neighborhood school concept, a commitment was made to further gather information, research program design, and build a well designed program that works in the best interest of all children. As such, a proposal was approved by the Board of Education to establish a full-day kindergarten option for all students at the onset of the 2015-2016 school year.