Wayne Full-Day Kindergarten Advocates Launch GoFundMe Campaign, New Facebook Group

Tracy Rozansky is using the power of the Internet and social media to help ensure full-day kindergarten is a reality in Wayne.

Rozansky is leading the charge to ensure people vote yes to a ballot question Nov. 3 of whether the Wayne Public School District should implement full-day kindergarten beginning next September.

She has launched a new Facebook group and a GoFundMe campaign and is working on a website to help raise awareness of the need to bring full-day kindergarten to the only Passaic County school district that doesn’t have it. Rozansky previously had a closed Facebook group with more than 650 members. More than half of them have joined the new public group, Rozansky said.

“We’re trying to expand who we are reaching,” Rozansky said. “A lot of people just don’t have any interest in it.”

Rozansky is trying to raise $4,000 on GoFundMe to create flyers to hand out door to door.

“We want to have conversations with people and find out if they know what’s going on,” Rozansky said.

The district only offers half-day kindergarten in two, two and a half hour sessions at the district’s nine elementary schools, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Each session features an hour of instruction and an hour of socialization.

That simply isn’t good enough, one parent said.

Jamie Colabelli is a Wayne resident who has taught kindergarten in Clifton. She piloted full-day kindergarten program in that district 12 years ago and has been teaching it ever since.

“I see what I have to teach my full-day everyday and I can’t even fathom how teachers do it in two and a half hours,” Colabelli said. ”It just isn’t enough time for them to prepare them for first grade.”

Colabelli said she thinks only sending the kids to a half-day kindergarten puts the kids at a disadvantage going into first grade.

“Kindergarten should be that transition year where children learn how to behave and act socially and emotionally, how to play appropriately, and learn the rules of school,” Colabelli said. “When you push that forward to first grade, it just carries everything over a little bit.”

Nearly 90 percent of New Jersey public school district offer full-day kindergarten.

The ballot question asks residents if an additional $2.1 million should be raised to implement the program. Nearly $1.9 million would be added to the district’s tax levy to hire 20 new teachers and five instructional aides, increase the hours cafeteria playground aides would work, and pay for staff development and employee benefits if the ballot question passes. The funds would be added to the 2016-17 district budget and result in a “permanent increase in the district’s tax levy,” which is the portion of the district’s budget raised by local taxes.

Rozansky is urging people to register to vote before the Oct. 13 deadline. She wants to ensure everyone who can votes Nov. 3.

A referendum vote in March on a $4.8 million project to increase safety and security measures throughout the district’s schools was defeated by just 18 votes 932-914.

“We need this and we need to make sure everyone who can get out there to vote, does,” Rozansky said. “We all have a stake in this.”