RCSD Backs Kindergarten Mandate
By: Cierra Putman
Updated: June 14, 2012
Should Kindergarten be mandatory? That's what the Rochester City School District is pushing.
"This is extremely important," Superintendent Bolgen Vargas said. "As a district we will not be successful unless we get our children to read and be engaged in school."
The district worked with Assemblyman David Gantt and Senator Joe Robach to get legislation in the Assembly and Senate to make it mandatory just for Rochester.
Right now kindergarten is a choice and more than 400 city kindergarten have truancy problems and have missed 20 or more days of school.
The district says all day kindergarten improves kids reading, vocabulary and other learning skills.
Making it mandatory will give the district more power to fight truancy improve test scores and ultimately get more children a high school diploma.
"So that we can start to have them build their school habits where they feel that they have to be and their parents are supporting them to be in school," Beverly Burrell-Moore, RCSD Division Chief said.
Assembly and Senate committees are reviewing the bill now.
The district hopes a kindergarten mandate will give them more power to stop this type of truancy.
The superintendent would like to see the mandate approved by the next school year.
