The Massapequa School District, according to its administrators, is involved in an on-going mission to ensure its students, including the kindergartners, meet the changing state-imposed standards. Dr. Carole Alexander, assistant district superintendent, spoke about the district's goals for Kindergarten for the upcoming year at a board of education planning session on Nov. 5. While she said she doesn't believe the district is far from meeting the state's standards, kindergarten will be going through some changes.

One of those initiatives, Alexander said, will be to strive for better communication between the teachers and the parents of kindergarten children so they are more aware of what the children are doing in the classroom. Instead of sending home monthly reports of what is going on, Alexander said teachers will be reaching out on a weekly basis to keep parents apprised.

The district will also be piloting a new reading program in kindergarten called Spotlight on Literacy, a literature-based basal reading program already being used by the first, second and third grades. Another thing Alexander said the district will do this year is to make an extra effort around April to provide a smoother transition to first grade.

Meanwhile, some parents question whether the kindergarten program is doing enough to prepare its students. According to past PTA Council President Kathy Sullivan, parents have been concerned for years about whether students are learning enough in the district's two and a half hour kindergarten program. Claiming that students are doing more socializing than learning and that the day is too short, many have been looking to the district to make sweeping changes that would beef up the instructional curriculum and extend school hours.

Sullivan said that some parents believe that children should be "learning to read and write from the get-go," and think Massapequa's kindergarten is geared too much toward socialization.

Still others have expressed the concern that students are not being taught phonics, leaving youngsters with questionable reading skills.

Alexander, on the other hand, said people's criticisms of the program are often a matter of misconception, misunderstanding or politics. According to Alexander, some parents' expectations of their children and what kindergarten is supposed to be like is not consistent with the reality. While children are exposed to many new skills including reading and writing, they may not be able to express what they've learned yet, she said.

"You can see the strength of the Kindergarten program in our third and fourth grade results, and I don't like to measure the kindergarten program by that year because kindergarten is developmental and it is an early childhood experience," added Alexander.

Alexander said that one of the main goals of the kindergarten program is to have students end the year wanting to come back to school. She said children must enjoy success in order for them to want to come back so if expectations are too high and children feel like failures, they may get turned off to school altogether.

"I think where there is a divergence of opinion about it, it has to do with people not seeing [kindergarten] as part of the whole but rather an entity in and of itself and trying to force youngsters to bloom before their time and the program itself is very strong," she said. "It's a very strong reading program; it's a very strong speaking program; it's very strong listening program; its very strong in terms of the experience we give kids."

Meanwhile, at the Nov. 5 board meeting, one man urged Alexander to get in the "trenches" to see that phonics is not being taught in the classroom despite her insistence that it is. Board members C. Richard Sorvillo and Robert Thompson have also expressed concern at board meetings that phonics was not being addressed in the schools.

Alexander responded, "It's not possible to teach reading without teaching phonics." While a large part of learning to read includes phonics, she said, it is only one element of many involved in learning to read.

Alexander said she believes it's a political issue. She said the issue is being embraced and championed as part of the political agenda for the right-winged religious movement. She added, however, that many parents are concerned because the way children are being taught is different from the way they themselves were taught growing up.

"I can only make the assumption that it's a small group of people that are very quick to feel that what they did when they were kids is the way that everything should be done and when I said that it was part of the overall religious right movement that happens to be true," she said. "But I don't think that most people that come to the board meetings understand that as the issue. They're looking at it as 'That's how I learned when I was a kid and that's what makes sense to me.' "

Diane Sales, a kindergarten teacher at East Lake School in Massapequa, agreed with Alexander saying that anyone who believes phonics isn't taught in Massapequa schools is mistaken.

"That's such a total misconception and I think that the phonics issue came about when whole language was introduced and any good teacher has taught phonics in their classroom all the time," Sales said adding that the parents of the East Lake kindergartners have not made any complaints concerning the issue.

Sales, who has been teaching for 24 years, said the question is whether phonics should be taught independently as a subject. These days it's not. Teachers are using what is referred to as a "whole language" approach to teaching, where the different elements involved in learning are combined into more comprehensive lessons.

"The whole idea is to have a relationship with all the subjects, to integrate all the subjects with each other." she said. "I do phonics I've always done phonics."

For example, she said if teaching the letter "b" she may have students think of many words as possible that begin and end with the letter. She has what she calls a "sound station," where students bring in objects that begin with the letter and they are placed on the window sill for the week. Sales she said she will also drill the pronunciation of the letter.

"That's teaching phonics; that's teaching the children the recognition of the letter sound," said Sales, who also pointed out that the Spotlight on Literacy program has a phonics component built in.

Meanwhile, one issue parents, teachers and administrators are in agreement on is the benefit of having full as opposed to half day classes for kindergartners, but, according to administrators, lack of funding and room in the school buildings prevents the district from extending the school day.

Schools Superintendent Dr. James Brucia said at the Nov. 5 meeting that finding the space to accommodate a full day program would be problematic, but he said he is hopeful that the district might be able to extend the program sometime in the future.

Sales said the children would definetly benefit from an extended program, however, the teachers are doing their best to compensate for it by maximizing the time they do have.