By P.J. D’Annunzio, Staff Writer, KennettTimes.com
Bancroft Elementary construction site. The new school will be able to hold apporximately 700-750 students.
NEW GARDEN — The new elementary facility on Bancroft Road in New Garden Township is set to be completed in time for the new school year, ready to take in students and alleviate overcrowding in Kennett Consolidated School District’s existing elementary schools.
“Next year we’ll have four schools that are going to work with elementary students,” KCSD Superintendent Dr. Barry Tomasetti said, “That’ll be the former Mary D. Lang, which will become the Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center; Bancroft Elementary, New Garden Elementary, and Greenwood Elementary will be grades one through five.”
The 98,305 square foot Bancroft Elementary school, which has modular classrooms and common areas dedicated to each grade level, will be able to accommodate a student body of approximately 700-750 students with classroom sizes ranging (in the ratio of students to teacher) from 25-1 for grades 1 and 2, and 21-1 for grades 3, 4, and 5. Total class sizes are expected to be 100 students per grade level.
The opening of this new school is a welcome sight in the view of the district and it comes in tandem with the reformation of Mary D. Lang into a kindergarten hub; the genesis of this reformation being the congested kindergarten classes in the district’s three elementary schools.
“This dates back prior to me coming to the district,” Tomasetti said, “they had some community meetings; the three elementary schools were overcrowded. There were kids in closets and makeshift classrooms—they had to put air ventilation in—there were music classes in foyers. They knew they had to expand the district and they had a community group that got together and that’s what they came up with.”
“There are some others schools that have kindergarten centers,” Tomasetti continued,” the one thing that makes this a little different is that typically the kindergarten centers are in close proximity to the other schools; this one isn’t.”
Mary D. Lang currently has the capacity to hold 400 students and is expected to be sufficient to handle the load of the incoming, district-wide kindergarten class. “
“If we go by history, last year there were 347 students. So we’re anticipating 300-350 students this year,” Tomasetti said.
The construction of Bancroft and the conversion of Mary D. Lang may also help facilitate the success of the district in ways other than the alleviation of overcrowding:
“What we’ve been getting is a lot of our charter students back,” Tomasetti observed,
He attributed the cause of this to the implementation of full-day kindergarten classes within KCSD. Before, if parent’s wanted to send their children to all-day kindergarten, they would have to send them to Avon Grove Charter.
“For every student that goes to a charter school we have to pay, out of district funds, $10,000 to the charter school. And what we’re seeing a lot of the students come back.”
In terms of the benefits of full day kindergarten as opposed to AM/PM, “The research shows that kids who attend the full day kindergarten tend to have higher reading levels,” Tomasetti said,” It lasts throughout their elementary career, they [researchers] compare kids that went through half day to those in a full day; the kids that were in full day were constantly above the others in reading achievement.”
As far as the construction of Bancroft is concerned and it’s possible benefits Tomasetti commented that “The Bancroft area has a lot of subdivisions there…Bancroft also has the highest amount of students currently going to charter…I think now that they see there’s going to be a new school, closer, more will be coming back.”
