By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
A majority of kindergarteners are entering Rockingham County schools ready to learn and succeed in the classroom, according to data presented to the school board Monday night.
In this year’s assessments, 51% of the county’s incoming students met all five of the “Virginia readiness” benchmarks set forth by the state. The same was true for kindergarteners across the commonwealth.
About a month into the school year, every school district must measure its kindergarteners for math and reading proficiency, self-regulation and social skills and overall well-being.
New kindergarteners in Rockingham County exceeded the state average on academics, with 66% of students meeting the literacy goal and 81% meeting the math goal, but fell slightly behind the average in other areas.
Still, 82% and 79% of the county’s kindergarteners met the state-rendered goals for self-regulation and social skills, respectively. Those are just as crucial as math and literacy, said Liza Coffman, the school district’s director of support services.
“We know that self-awareness is important, because that’s like self-control and inhibition and ‘wait your turn,’ and how well can you attend to those things?” Coffman said. “And then the social awareness, all of those pieces do matter with what happens in a classroom, as well as their numeracy and literacy skills coming in.”
As school board members reviewed the data, school board chair Sara Horst said she’d like to see data from previous years to illustrate learning loss from the pandemic.
“I do wonder, the kids that are in kindergarten this year, they maybe would have had daycare, preschool experiences that were different than what we would have expected before Covid – and to what degree is that having an impact on us still?” Horst said. “As a parent, I can tell you my daughter’s daycare preschool experience during 2021-22, those years, was very different than the one my sons had when they were in preschool and daycare … As a parent, I watched some of the things like speech delays and some of those things, and it just is what it is.”
Also of note
In a brief meeting on Monday, the school board approved its plans for career and technical education as well as special education — two outlines they’re required to complete to receive financial support in those areas.
Rockingham County schools are also coming in under budget, with the district having spent just over $116.3 million – 65% of its budget – as it’s 75% of the way through the academic and fiscal years.
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