Provincial Education Department officials are urging parents to register youngsters for next fall's Kindergarten.

The department issued a plea Tuesday for parents of Kindergarten-eligible children to visit their local school to register.

Local school board officials need accurate registration numbers to plan the number of classes and teachers required in September.

That's when Kindergarten programs in the province, now run by child-care centres, will be become part of the public school system.

Some parents appear to be ignoring the repeated calls to register their children, officials say.

"The more information we have the more accurate it is, and the better off everyone will be in terms of planning and preparing," said Dale Sabean, superintendent of the Western School Board. Sabean said officials want to ensure they have the right number of teachers in the right locations.

The Eastern School District held a special meeting last week to come up with a solution to overcrowding, as approximately 900 Kindergarten students enter elementary schools in September.

Meantime, some substitute teachers in P.E.I. are worried they may have trouble finding full-time work once Kindergarten students and their teachers move into the public school system next fall.

via www.cbc.ca

All-day school for kindergarten-aged children will probably be an all-year affair in some of the nearly 600 schools across Ontario selected to launch the popular new program next fall.

In announcing the final list of schools where about 35,000 kindergarten students will be among the first in the province to spend full days in the classroom, Ontario's Ministry of Education called on boards to help families out by extending child-care services at school throughout the calendar year. The province is proposing that the extended services cover statutory holidays, PD days and summertime, for a reasonable fee to parents.

"Some boards will have the administrative capacity to do this and others won't," Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said. "We just felt that we should learn from the first year's implementation and see what the needs are that arise – and see how many boards step up to the plate rather than requiring them to do this additional thing."

She estimated the cost to parents at $15 to $25 a day. The province has pledged $200-million toward the all-day kindergarten program for the first year, and another $300-million to roll it out to an additional 15,000 pupils in the second year.

The minister wouldn't rule out making the year-round component mandatory by the time all-day kindergarten is implemented across the province for the 2015-16 school year.

via www.theglobeandmail.com