Naples Elementary School

"I want to give parents of kids enrolling in kindergarten a heads up about the school's split class approach. 1/2 of the kindergarteners, the Early Starts - ES, have class 8:00 - 12:20. The other half, the Late Starts - LS, from 9:30 - 1:50. You will be told that there is no difference. This is not remotely true. Make your decision about Early Start or Late Start fully knowledgeable of the differences. • LS families have many, many schedule changes (over 80 for the school year)… families cannot plan upon a steady daily routine (9:30 - 1:50)… whereas ES families have extremely reliable and predictable schedules (8:00 - 12:20 with only 2-4 exceptions for the school year). • Each day, Kinder kids get 90 minutes of small class instruction (15 or fewer kids in the room). LS students will lose a minimum of 20 minutes per week of this highly desirable focused-small-class instruction… and more than an hour on some weeks (such as during parent-teacher conferences when ES students receive nearly 30% more focused-small-class instruction for the week). Over the course of the school year, this will result in LS students losing 3 full days of education time, and the equivalent of 8+ days of focused-small-class instruction vs. ES students. • Keeping track of the LS schedule can be maddening. For example, one week in November, LS students were in class 9:00 – 1:00 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday; 9:30 – 1:30 Thursday and 9:30 – 1:50 on Friday. Four of the five days were not the expected time of 9:30 – 1:50. By contrast, ES students were in class everyday from 8:00 – 12:20, exactly as expected. • LS students are not permitted to socialize or utilize the playground at morning drop off. They must sit quietly on the sidewalk while they wait to be escorted into the school. ES students run, play and socialize - making full use of the school grounds, while parents gather and talk. • Virtually all activities (PTA Meetings, Morning Assemblies, Committee Meetings) are scheduled for 8:00AM. LS families must adjust schedules by 1.5 hours to participate in these spirit-building activities. This will likely require changing family routines the night before, and the morning of, each activity… thereby disrupting rhythms and schedules. ES families have no such schedule disruptions."