Countdown to full-day kindergarten begins

Partnership with LIU Post will help introduce youngsters to the arts

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One of the highly anticipated changes in the East Meadow School District for the 2015-16 school year is an expanded, full-day kindergarten program, which district officials said would combine elements of its half-day program with other innovative educational initiatives, including a partnership with the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at LIU Post, in Brookville.

Kindergartners will attend three children’s performances at the Tilles Center this year, as part of an addition to the curriculum called Enrichment Through the Arts.

It is just one of several such additions that educators said they planned for the program, rather than simply expanding on what they already had. “We had a very fine kindergarten program,” said Cindy Munter, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. “And now we’re given this gift of time. But it wasn’t just a matter of stretching what we had. We needed to find a way to make it unique and exciting. This is historic for us in East Meadow. We had the opportunity to create something that could be monumental.”

Many residents had called for kindergarten expansion for years. In the 2014-15 school year, the district was just one of two in Nassau County that lacked a full-day program. Last winter, at the request of the Board of Education, district officials conducted a base study of the curriculum, facilities and personnel requirements for an expansion, and the results were presented to the public at a board meeting in January.

In May’s budget vote, full-day kindergarten was included in a proposition that exceeded the tax cap and needed supermajority approval, but 66 percent of voters said yes. A week later, Munter said, the district formed a 15-member committee of administrators and principals to begin designing the program. They visited the Wantagh and Levittown school districts, both of which recently made the transition from half-day to full-day kindergarten.

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