Harrowsmith and Hinchinbrooke PS to get early learning in 2012

Jeff Green | Mar 17, 2011

Toddlers in Harrowsmith and Parham will be eligible for all day kindergarten when they reach school age in the fall of 2012. The Limestone District School Board announced last week that the early learning program would be extended to the local schools for the 2012-2013 school year.

The two schools will join Sharbot Lake Public School, Prince Charles (Verona), North Addington Education Centre (Cloyne) and Perth Road Public School, who already have the program in place. Other local schools, including Loughborough PS (Sydenham), Clarendon Central (Plevna) and Land O’Lakes PS (Mountain Grove) are not on the list, but the program is designed to roll out throughout the province in the coming years. In the Limestone Board, the roll out has been accelerated in the rural schools, leaving a number of schools in Kingston with the current system, which provides kindergarten two days each week and every second Friday, or half-days, Monday to Friday.

Hinchinbrooke school was chosen as a site for all day kindergarten in 2012 even though it is slated to close at the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

Jane Douglas, Communications Director for the Limestone Board, said that since the students from Hinchinbrooke will be going to a new school in Sharbot Lake in 2013 and the current Sharbot Lake Public School students have the program, it made sense for early learning to be in place one year before all the students are brought together in a new school.

All schools in Ontario are slated for early learning by the 2015-2016 school year.

When the program was initially announced early in 2010, the following criteria were identified for selecting schools for accelerated adoption of early learning: availability of space, community need, existing child care programs, availability of reasonably priced childcare and after school care programming, and student achievement.