Superior holds round-up of future kindergartners

Wednesday morning was the first day of an exciting new career at school for next year's kindergarten class at Superior Elementary School.

Superior Elementary School's annual Kindergarten Round-up started at 8 a.m. and offered kids entering school next year an opportunity to meet their teacher, Kim Rebich, and get comfortable in the new school building and meet some of their new classmates.

However, the event was not all fun and games for the up and coming students. Former Superior Elementary School teacher Donna Chambers, who helped out with the event, said the children all had to take a statewide issued Brigance Test to measure their readiness to enter kindergarten.

“If they're old enough they're eligible to enter kindergarten, so you don't want to put too much in that test. But it does let you know where they're at coming in,” said Chambers, who taught at Superior for 30 years before she retired two years ago.

Parents brought their children's state issued birth certificates, current immunization records and Social Security cards to help them finish out all of the paperwork.

Students will start next year's classes Aug. 27. In order to be eligible for kindergarten this year, students have to be 5 years old by Sept. 5, 2008.

Fifteen of the 17 students already enrolled for next year's kindergarten class showed up to the event.

While this is a rather small class, Principal Scott Kinney said they usually pick up several students over the summer and he is confident they will have around 20 students at the start of the year.

Kinney said overall his building numbers are down. Superior Elementary has 145 students, but they had 156 in the fall and there were 170 students at the school when they closed their doors last spring.

“It's unfortunate because this is happening all across the state. The legislature funds schools based on the number of kids that we have enrolled and this is becoming an all too common problem,” Kinney said.

This is Kinney's first year with Superior Elementary School and he said this problem is not one that is confined to rural schools.

Kinney said when he worked in Ronan last year the high school was down 40 students.

“The demographics of Montana are shifting and people are having to pursue employment out of state,” Kinney said.

The funding formula continues to need to be fixed so we can continue to fund programs regardless of how many kids we have in those programs,” Kinney said.

Despite funding worries, Kinney said he is very excited about this year's kindergarten class.

“We have a very, very robust kindergarten program and full-day kindergarten has proven to be very, very successful.

We're finding that our kids are much more ready to enter first grade and they're proving that through their test scores,” Kinney said.