All-day kindergarten starts at Blessed Sacrament School

Intermountain Catholic

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Blessed Sacrament Catholic School beginning this scholar year started the full day Pre-K program in which the kids can now attend daily mass and also have play time and learn more. IC photo Laura Vallejo

SANDY – This year, Blessed Sacrament Catholic School began a full-day kindergarten such as those offered at other Catholic schools in the diocese. The faculty started looking at this project last year because of comments they received from the parents at the school.

"The parents had a lot of feedback about looking for an all-day program," said Matt DeVoll, Blessed Sacrament principal. "We looked around at the other diocesan schools and they were doing the all-day program so we said ‘OK, how can we do an all-day program here?"

School administrators went to three different local Catholic schools to observe their educational programs and analyze how the teachers worked the all-day programs, DeVoll said. When they finished the analysis, they started mapping how they could get the best of all three schools and make it work at Blessed Sacrament.

"We started looking at a lot of positives about it; obviously, you can get more educational curriculum out of a full day," said DeVoll, adding that now all students are able to attend daily, which he said was key to their learning.

In the past the afternoon students in the half-day program missed Mass and the morning students couldn’t attend assemblies that were held it the afternoon.

"Research goes to show that kids are able to absorb more in the course of a full day," DeVoll said. "We have some down time, and play time during the day, too, and we just put that into the full-day program."

When DeVoll approached Utah Catholic Schools Superintendent Holy Cross Sister Catherine Kamphaus with the proposal for Blessed Sacrament School to have the full-day kindergarten, she just said "Great news! Let’s roll it up," DeVoll said.

Right now 30 students are enrolled in the full-day class. When they have art class, half the students go to it and the other half stay for another class so they have a 15:2 student:teacher ratio.

"The feedback is very positive; they [students and parents] love the full day and the parents save money because instead of doing the half day here and half at day care, now they have the full day," said DeVoll.

"The full-day program built more structure," said Cori Parrent, a mother of one of the students. "My kid now knows the routine of the class. Really, it’s amazing how much they can learn."

Although Blessed Sacrament School only started the full-day program this year, they have a waiting list, but because of lack of space they won’t be able to accommodate more students until they have more rooms.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, changes in American society and education over the last 20 years have contributed to the popularity of all-day kindergarten programs in many communities.

The number of single-parent households and the number of families in which both parents work is significantly higher now compared to a generation ago. Studies show that parents prefer a full-day kindergarten program; research also suggests that many children benefit academically and socially from these programs.