Re-enrollment Intention for 2010-2011

Dear Current Butterfly Nursery Families,

I'll give details and discussion below, but here is the brief recommendation from the early childhood faculty. When filling out your intentions for your current Butterfly Nursery child for next year, please consider your child to be kindergarten ready for next year and select a 4 or 5 day option (with the option of extended care).

Some Details

Many of you attended Helle Heckmann's presentation in the Autumn. There, and in her work with the teachers, she made a good case for the value of a 4 or 5 day rhythm in school over a 3 day rhythm, and the value of having very mixed age kindergartens (her program mixes children ages 1 to 7; it would take quite a licensing change to go that far here). Next year we are taking a first step in this direction. Golden Forest and Sunflower will be parallel 4 or 5 day kindergartens with children from age 3 to 6. For a variety of reasons--largely because of my other teaching roles in instrumental music and parent & child--we are maintaining my nursery class at 3 days for next school year, even though we are believing more and more that a 4 day program would be better pedagogically even for our youngest of students.

As many of you know, we had a waiting list for the nursery class this summer, and we want to make sure to be able to welcome new nursery children next summer (several of you enrolled over the summer) so that our school can remain strong and grow stronger. By some past ways of sorting children, 11 of our 12 children could return to Butterfly next year, which would be very easy for me (to have the same class a second year) but not in the best interest of the school. We want to assure you that we are not sending our young 4 and 3 year olds next year as orphan young children in a sea of older children; Dyanne and Kim will make sure their curriculum meets the age of your child, and it will feel like a healthy group because there will be such a strong presence of young 4 and older 3 year olds in next year's kindergarten. My younger son, for example, will attend school 5 full days with Kim or Dyanne next year. (On a side note, this year's kindergarten is particularly old; a number of children were 6 before the school year started; next year's kindergarten, even without all our families, will be on average quite a bit younger). As your child begins this new journey, it is likely she or he will be able to stay with Kim and Dyanne for 3 years to receive benefits of that continuity.

That being said, there could be a compelling reason why we would make an exception next year. If you feel 3 days is the right option for your child, please find a time to talk to me before filling in your enrollment intentions--or mark your desire and plan to have a conversation with me or the early childhood faculty before contracts for next year come out.

This seems a big and exciting leap for all of us (it is a little scary, to be honest, to think that as of now I have 0 children enrolled in my nursery for next year), but many of the current 6 year olds in kindergarten began 3 years ago when they were young 4 year olds or older 3 year olds, so in sense this is a return to what was our normal practice in the past.

We can discuss your joys, hopes, concerns, wishes for this year and next at our upcoming parent meeting from 5 to 6pm on March 17 (the date has been changed from the original calendar).

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde