West Cook News

River Forest District 90 has engaged "early learning" consultants to help staff figure how how to teach "full day" kindergarten to five and six year old children next year.

“The social-emotional focus is really important," said District 90 Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Alison Hawley, who outlined her plans to the new District 90 Board of Education on May 15. "Teachers are working with consultants to figure out which centers they are going to use and how that might flow throughout the day.”

Hawley said she is seeking to "align instructional minutes to best practices” but admitted that full-day kindergarten is "really academic, teacher-facilitated play time.”

Still, she said the district has been "engaged in professional learning sessions with consultants related to daily exploration and choice time," including Karen DuBois-Garofalo of the University of New Hampshire, who describes herself as an "early learning coach & coordinator." 

DuBois-Garofalo is a self-professed devotee of the "Reggio Emilia" philosophy of teaching, which argues schools should take over the "social emotional" development of children from parents.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is also mandating schools try to influence the "social emotional" development of the state's children. His new school standards ask kindergarteners to “identify family, peer, school, and community strengths”, to “describe positive qualities in others”, and to “identify and perform roles that contribute to one’s family."

In April, Hawley told Chalkbeat she planned wholesale changes for River Forest kindergarten.

"We’re changing standards for our kindergarten students. The academic standards are designed for a full year and we have a half-day program," she said.

Modeled on Elgin

Sources tell West Cook News that Hawley is modeling District 90's new kindergarten program on that of U-46, one of the largest districts in Illinois. 

U-46, which has 39,000 students, primarily serves students in Elgin, Bartlett, Hanover Park, South Elgin, Streamwood and Wayne. According to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), some four in ten U-46 students don't speak English proficiently and just two in ten are at grade level in English and Math. The district has a 38 percent chronic absentee rate.

In 2017, then-District 90 board member Rich Moore argued against full-day kindergarten, arguing it allowed his wife and child to spend more time together.

 "It really was a gift for (his wife) to stay home," he told Crain's Chicago Business.

Moore, who resigned from the board before the recent April 4 elections, eventually apologized after an "uproar from working parents who didn't share his—outdated, in their minds—vision" of a mother being a homemaker.

District 90 unanimously passed a resolution approving full-day kindergarten for River Forest on Feb. 21.

Hawley joined District 90 in 2016 and was promoted from director to assistant superintendent in June 2022, though district test scores have fallen 20 percent over her tenure, leading to the district's losing its "Exemplary" status, per ISBE.

The current District 90 board includes Katie Avalos, Sarah Eckmann, Nicole Thompson and Stacey Williams along with newly-elected members Joseph Cortese, Kristine Mackey and Eric Isenberg.