Kinder Academy may have to wait until next year, director of educational services Candace Raskin confirmed Friday.

Monday, August 23, 1999

Kinder Academy may have to wait until next year, director of educational services Candace Raskin confirmed Friday. The program, which would have been a pilot program this year, was designed to supplement a child’s regular kindergarten program over the second half of the day.

It was also fee-based and optional and the numbers simply aren’t there.

"We’ve finished enrollments at this point and not enough registered," Raskin said. "But the final decision won’t be made until Tuesday. I have to meet with the building principals first, to see if they recruited anymore and then we’ll take a look at the final numbers.

"We need to have enough students signed up to break even," Raskin said. "If we don’t, then we’ll try again next year."

Raskin pointed to "miscommunication" as a big part of the problem with the low numbers.

"There are so many programs; I think parents might have found it confusing," she said.

The other programs she referred to – extended day kindergarten, preschool early intervention and the jump start program – are all state or federally funded programs only intended for qualifying students who need the extra help.

Kinder Academy, on the other hand, was to pay for itself through the enrollment fees ($1,500 per student) and was available to any student. It was offered through Community Education and the classes – Raskin originally hoped to run two pilot classes – would have been located at Woodson school.

"The extended day program has some of the same elements, but it’s much more tutorial than Kinder Academy would be," Raskin said when she initially introduced the idea. "Nor would Kinder Academy be a duplication of the current kindergarten program … I see it as a different kind of experience: more relaxed, focusing more on social skills, the way I remember my kindergarten. Nowadays kindergartens are much more academically driven."

Superintendent James Hess said Raskin was going to make a recommendation to him Tuesday, based on the numbers, and that the Austin Board of Education "has been alerted" that the Kinder Academy may not happen this year.

"You have to give them (Kinder Academy organizers) credit for trying, but it was up to the people and the people didn’t respond," board member Dick Lees said. "We also aren’t physically set up as well as some of the places where programs like this have succeeded – like Faribault – I think the fact that the kids would have had to be bussed from their schools was part of the problem."