State tax dollars can be used to teach younger and younger kindergartners in the coming years, but most Johnson County schools aren’t changing their approaches to when children should start school.
The measure is part of the 2019-2021 Indiana state budget. The birthday deadline for kindergarten students to be automatically admitted remains Aug. 1, which means for the most part the average student isn’t getting younger. Admissions policies are left up to the schools, which have the option to admit students who turn five after that date as exceptions to the rule if they deem they are ready, said Adam Baker, spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Education.
Last year, students who turned five after Aug. 1 didn’t receive state funding. This fall, they’ll receive funding as long as they turn five by Sept. 1, and next year that date moves to Oct. 1. Most local schools, however, are admitting exceptions to the automatic admission deadline based on merit, instead of whether they’ll be funded. Those exceptions tend to be for students born within a few months of Aug. 1.
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Franklin and Edinburgh schools offer about three exceptions each year and don’t base their decisions on funding.
Clark-Pleasant, however, takes funding into account when making admissions decisions. Last year, for example the district did not admit any students who weren’t five years old by Aug. 1, as it mirrored the funding cutoff date. Clark-Pleasant schools will evaluate six students as potential exceptions this year, but have not yet made those decisions, spokesperson John Venter said.
Last year, each kindergarten student who turned five by Aug. 1 came with a base $5,352 in state funding. Additional funding, based on factors such as the poverty level in the school district, averaged $742 per student. The department of education doesn’t keep data on the average birthday of a kindergartner, so any shifts in age would be difficult to track, Baker said in an email.
Before last year, schools could receive funding for any child who turned five after Aug. 1 regardless of when their birthday was. That created situations, however, for which students would receive funding from the state twice if those schools deemed the child wasn’t ready for kindergarten midway through the school year and decided to have them repeat once they turned five, Baker said.
Greenwood schools only accepts kindergartners who turn 5 by Aug. 15, Assistant Superintendent Todd Pritchett said.
Although the two-week window isn’t as forgiving as the state’s new funding deadline, the schools base their date on when previous kindergartners have proven they are ready for school.
“From my experience, (it’s based on) understanding students who enter later than that established date typically won’t be as successful as other students in kindergarten,” Pritchett said.
The district evaluates students to see if they are ready academically and socially, he said.
“I can’t speak for everyone but we still have early entry processes students have to go through to be accepted,” Pritchett said. “We don’t have a lot of early entry kindergartners. We have a couple. From our perspective it’s whether a student is ready from an emotional maturity standpoint.”
Elementary schools throughout Johnson County use readiness evaluations to determine if a child is ready to enter kindergarten, including at Franklin schools. Franklin schools have no strict birthday cutoff, but typically students who turn five after August are not admitted. The admission process at the district is not expected to change even with the funding date change, Assistant Superintendent Brooke Worland said.
“If you’re a young person with a November birthday part of the question becomes: how does an individual student prepare for the rest of the class?” Worland said. “Are they socially and emotionally ready?”
While schools are required to admit kindergartners if they turn five by Aug. 1, Franklin schools also evaluate each student, which allows teachers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each child, she said.
“When students attend kindergarten screenings, part of the screening process goes through literacy, phonetic awareness and then we look at math and then visual and fine motor skills,” Worland said. “We assess those four areas. On the rubric we’re using if you perform really well but your birthday is Aug. 15 we’ll let you come in.”
While Edinburgh schools don’t set a deadline for exceptions, most students they admit turn five by Sept. 1. The district does not base decisions on funding, Superintendent Doug Arnold said.
Kindergarten teachers and East Side Elementary School Principal Andrew Scholl are part of the evaluation process, he said.
“We look at the kid, their maturity (and) their skills and if they look successful we make an exception,” Arnold said. “There (is) no measured cutoff date, but beyond Sept. 1 there are very few (admissions). Occasionally, there is a precocious young man, but based on ability and maturity and if it would benefit (that child), I work with them.”
