This also included a public participation process in which parents, specialists from the schools and daycare centers as well as children from the elementary school Am Sonnenberg and Kranichdamm and the after-school care centers Kigaluga, St. Lukas, St. Joseph and Pusteblume took part.
This part of the project has now been completed and the results were presented by the participants themselves in the Kulturscheune in Lebenstedt. The event also served to reach an agreement among the participants on key topics, which were then passed on to the city of Salzgitter for concept development. This concept is to be presented to the public on March 11 from 4 p.m. in the council chamber of the town hall in Lebenstedt.
"Salzgitter is always open to model projects," explained First City Councillor Christa Frenzel in her welcoming speech. The children, youth and family department in particular is always at the cutting edge here. "I am delighted that we have been selected as a model location and that we already have results," said Frenzel.
"We want to put what you have developed here into paragraphs," said Nicole Gerlach from the Ministry of Education, giving an outlook on the next steps in the pilot project. The aim of the process is a possible legal anchoring of the "cooperative after-school care" in the form of a change to the Lower Saxony Child Day Care Act and School Act. "Unlike usual, this time we want to listen beforehand and incorporate your ideas into the legislation," emphasized Gerlach. This will be used to put together a complete package so that all-day care can function better in the future. She thanked the participants: "It is not a matter of course that people take so much private time for such public participation."
The head teacher of the Kranichdamm School, Hans-Günter Sanmann, and the head of the Kigaluga kindergarten, Petra Moews, together with their staff, presented the results of the children's participation in the all-day childcare facilities. According to the head teacher, the pupils at his school have many interests, such as sport or music, and would therefore like to be able to use other rooms in the school, such as the sports hall and the music room, in addition to the rooms where all-day care takes place.
"Our children want more time and less planning from the teachers," said Kigaluga manager Petra Moews, summing up the results of her after-school children's work. It is also important for the pupils to have only a few contact persons so that they don't have to keep adjusting to new teachers.
The parents involved from both schools want reliable childcare times, including during the school vacations, as well as flexibility in terms of pick-up times. However, they would also like to see so-called curfews, during which parents should not pick up their children so that they have enough time to do their homework, eat and relax. They would also like to have fixed educational contacts for their concerns.
"We simply want children to be able to be children," said Irmgard Gierga-Knoll, head of the Sonnenberg elementary school, summarizing the results of the work of the teachers at her school and the educators at the after-school care centres in Gebhardshagen. The problem at the moment is that the children at the all-day school are still timetabled in the afternoon. This means that the pupils cannot find their own rhythm. Every child has different needs, so it would be important to have a system in which the children can decide for themselves when they can do their homework, relax, eat or play, for example, from 12:45 to 14:45.
