Students learn the importance of team work as area school celebrate Red Ribbon Week.
By: Melissa Hayes
In an effort to ensure that students are socially and emotionally ready to enter school, the South Brunswick Board of Education passed a policy change that would gradually move up the kindergarten entry cutoff date.
The change will be phased in, and students who turn 5 before or on Dec. 31 will be eligible for kindergarten next year. The following year students would need to be 5 by Nov. 30. In 2007 the cut-off would be moved to Oct. 31.
"It will be timely, but not too fast to create disharmony," Superintendent Gary McCartney said Monday.
Dr. McCartney said that many neighboring school districts in Middlesex County have September or October cutoff dates in effect already.
"We want to make sure our youngsters are socially and emotionally ready to come to school," he said.
Although there is no scientific way to determine when students are ready to enter school, Dr. McCartney said, the cutoff date is one thing that the district can make a constant.
"I believe that one of the things that we need to do is be more systematic in our approach," he said.
By having a cutoff date that is consistent with other school districts in the area, if a problem is to arise in the district, it can be looked at more systematically.
"We can begin to create that systematized way of dealing with an outcome," Dr. McCartney said. "By holding certain things constant, we can get an idea of certain things we need to change," he said.
School board member Daniel Watts said he was not initially in favor of changing the date.
"I was really concerned that we were looking at an easy solution to a problem that we had not well characterized," he said.
Dr. Watts said it was a more complex decision than he had realized.
He said that even in changing the cutoff date, the school district has to be prepared to look at problems that may arise.
"We must take extreme care in looking at the situations of individual children," he said.
Dr. Watts said that after discussing the policy change with other members of the board he had no problem voting for it, and felt it would help the board look at things in the future in a more systematic way.