Chardon Kindergarten Moving Back to Elementary Schools
Kindergarten students in next year’s incoming class will once again attend Park and Munson elementary schools, with the Chardon Schools Board of Education voting in favor of the reconfiguration at their Dec. 16 meeting.
Kindergarten students in next year’s incoming class will once again attend Park and Munson elementary schools, with the Chardon Schools Board of Education voting in favor of the reconfiguration at their Dec. 16 meeting.
Kindergarten students currently attend the Chardon Early Learning Center, housed in the former Maple Elementary School, across the road from Chardon High School. Munson and Park currently house grades one through three.
There are a number of efficiencies to the change and no foreseen downsides, Superintendent Mike Hanlon said.
“We — based on class size at Munson and Park — at this point we have room and we studied that,” Hanlon said. “We can accommodate the kindergarten (students) going back in.”
Moving incoming students will have minimal impact on them as they haven’t yet settled into one building, he said.
About half a tier of transportation would be eliminated and the traffic situation would be enhanced by not putting kindergarten bus traffic in the vicinity of the high school, Hanlon continued.
“It also, from a staffing standpoint, would have some other efficiencies, that we will not have, say, Park music teachers going over for kindergarten just to pick up related arts classes there,” Hanlon said.
Kindergarten no longer being housed at CELC also means they may not need to operate a full kitchen there, he noted.
Board member Andrea Clark asked if the reconfiguration would result in combining classrooms for special classes, like art and music, at the elementary schools again.
Assistant Superintendent Ed Klein replied they didn’t anticipate the need for such a move at present.
“We have room for four classrooms at each of the buildings, not considering, as well, any special education programming that (Student Services Director Linda Elegante) is looking at either continuing or expanding at either one of those locations,” he said. “The short answer is, we may have to go to the backup plan of ‘art on a cart, music on a cart,’ but that’s the backup to the backup there.”
Clark also noted as a parent with kids at both schools, she had previously dealt with the traffic hopping from an elementary school to CELC.
“It was definitely a nightmare,” she said.
The motion passed unanimously.
