Superintendent Margaret “Missy” Peretti plans to continue conversations with parents to learn about how their children are developing in the new kindergarten program.
By Krystal Nurse
The Sun
Superintendent of Harrison Township Public Schools Margaret “Missy” Peretti is excited for what’s to come in the 2018–2019 school year, especially with the district officially offering a full-day kindergarten program, which she says will positively affect teachers, faculty, parents and students.
“Since I began in 2009, I’ve had many conversations with community members regarding our kindergarten program, in general, while it was wildly successful as a half-day program,” said Peretti. “I did get a fair amount of feedback from parents of our youngest children in the community requesting to continue the dialogue for full-day kindergarten.”
Once she received the feedback from parents, she and the rest of the Harrison Township Board of Education began discussions while teachers were looking at other districts to see how their faculty handles full-day kindergarten and to implement some of their findings in Pleasant Valley School and Harrison Township School.
“We’re utilizing our talented instructional aids in classrooms for academic support, but the fact that it’s a full-day program has changed the way that we deliver instruction, and we support their emotional development as well,” said Peretti. “It’s been a fairly big overhaul.”
In its new instructional program, the district was able to offer more elective classes (which they refer to as specials) such as music, art, library, physical education and 21st Century Learning — a state-mandated curriculum composed of lessons for achieving success and financial independence in the modern world — to the kindergarten students.
Peretti also noted that with the new full-day instruction, students have the ability to socialize with one another inside the classrooms, during lunch and recess on the new playground sets, which was originally only available for kids in grade one through six due to the half-day kindergarten program.
“From our district’s perspective, we do know the importance of play in the kids’ overall development and learning to get along, and that free time is when those skills are practiced,” said Peretti.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it: We have the most child-centered teachers that I’ve worked with in my entire career,” added Peretti. “They were really dedicated to making sure that this change went off without a hitch and that it was a really successful transition.”
Because the district no longer offers a half-day session for kindergarten, a mid-day run is no longer needed by the school buses. All kids for Pleasant Valley School are picked up in one run and all kids are picked up for Harrison Township School in another.
Throughout the year, Peretti plans to meet with parents to get an update on how they feel about the program, how their children are handling the transition and what changes could be made, if needed.
