Keep half-day kindergarten as an option

Is it child abuse to put a 5-year-old on the school bus at 6:30 a.m. and not to return home until 4:30 p.m.? I could not comprehend why any parent would put a young child through such trauma.

I first learned of this practice when my sister explained why she was not sending any of her children to kindergarten. Her district only offered an all-day program. They lived on a ranch 10 miles from town. Their children were the first ones on the bus and the last ones off. She was not going to put them through this ordeal.

When we moved from California to Texas in the middle of the school year, we discovered that an all-day program was all that was offered in our school district, too. Against our better judgment we enrolled our 5-year-old son, Adam. School hours for these little tykes were the same as for everyone else, 8:15 a.m.-3:15 p.m., five days a week.

Adam had had a great kindergarten experience in the half-day program in California. But after about a month of this new schedule, he started to wear down. Regardless of how early we put him to bed, he was absolutely exhausted — physically, mentally and emotionally. My husband and I decided in the sixth week that we would withdraw him and teach him at home. (Twelve years later, our kindergarten dropout garnered approximately $60,000 in college scholarships.)

As parents we had the feeling that spending more time in kindergarten every day wasn't better, it was excessive! But we had more children to send through this school system, so what were we going to do about this issue in the future?

As I talked with other mothers, I discovered that we were not the only people who felt like this program was not best for children and certainly wasn't "family friendly."

We talked to kindergarten teachers, off the record. Each one told us that the children were so exhausted after lunch that they spent the afternoon watching videos, napping, snacking and playing. We decided to circulate a petition requesting that parents be given the option of a half-day kindergarten program. In the process of circulating that petition, we were told that a half-day kindergarten program couldn't be instituted, that it was against the law. There was much misinformation on the subject. In reality, we later learned that it was not even required by law that children attend kindergarten.

We contacted the Texas Education Agency in Austin to obtain accurate information and had several conversations with the associate commissioner. We researched laws and policies. We wanted to know exactly what our rights were prior to approaching the school board with our petition.