Some Alabama schools are losing snoozing for kindergartners, arguing that the traditional 30-minute afternoon nap wastes valuable instruction time.
The Henry County Schools system phased out nap times for kindergarten students this year. The naps have been replaced with a 30-minute rest/reading time where students can relax or work on reading skills.
Headland Elementary School Principal Faye Shipes said the move was necessary to keep up with increasingly demanding state goals for students.
The state adopted a new data-driven reading series this year and continues to push the Alabama Reading Initiative in schools.
“To be perfectly honest, there’s so much in the kindergarten curriculum that we need the extra classroom time,” Shipes said.
She said Henry County is not alone in phasing out afternoon naps. Henry County School Superintendent Dennis Coe recently polled superintendents of other school districts and found that few of them still had nap time in their schools.
Shipes said she has received some negative comments from parents about the new policy, but those comments had been few.
In Dothan, Montana Magnet School still allows naps for its kindergarten students.
Principal Sue Clark said the naps allow the students to rest so they can later focus on schoolwork. Without the naps, students get tired and can become unattentive and easily frustrated, she said.
Clark said the naps help kindergartners adjust to the long school day. Usually, Montana teachers convert nap time into a rest/read time once kindergarten students enter their second semester. By then, Clark said, most students have adjusted to the length of the school day.
“It’s a developmental thing,” she said.
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