Board of Ed Approves All-Day Kindergarten for Entire District

In what Board President Mark Hughes called a "momentous occasion," the Meriden Board of Education unanimously approved a plan to institute for elementary students in the entire school district Tuesday night.

"This is monumental for being able to move this district forward," Hughes said, saying that all-day kindergarten will improve longterm student success by giving the district the ability to better prepare students right when they're coming into the system.

The approval means all-day kindergarten will start in the 2012-2013 school year. Every elementary school but Casimir Pulaski will have an on-site program. Because of overcrowding at the school, Pulaski kindergarteners will be bussed to .

for a new addition to house all-day kindergarten at Hanover last Friday, and it is slated to be completed in the middle of the next school year. Until it is done, Hanover and Pulaski kindergarteners will be in temporary classrooms at Hanover school, the school's principal Miguel Cardona told Meriden Patch last week. 

The total additional cost of the program to the district will be about $95,665, which will go to hiring four new paraprofessionals for the classrooms.

All current half-day kindergarten teachers will now teach full-day kindergarten, and four other teachers in the district will be reassigned to kindergarten, according to documents handed out at Tuesday's meeting. Current pre-kindergarten teachers and para-professionals staffed at the schools in the Apple Pre-K program will be moved to all-day kindergarten, and that program, which is available to only a portion of qualifying Meriden children, dismantled.

Board Member Scott Hozebin complimented district staff for keeping final costs down – after initial estimates put the price of all-day kindergarten over the million-dollar mark.

Approval for the new initiative comes a week after Superintendent Mark Benigni informed the board's that the district may have to close one of the district's 12 schools if it is flat-funded by the city council for a fourth year in a row. When asked how the district could afford the measure in light of this, he said the benefits far exceeded the costs. 

"There’s some things you’re going to believe in and you’re going to do regardless of the budget difficulties that you face," Benigni said. "I think all-day kindergarten is one of those things. We know that when we get extra contact time at the earliest levels, the benefits last throughout their years of schooling."

As for the decision to close a school, that's up to the budget for the next fiscal year, Benigni said, which the city and school district will start negotiating in early 2012.

"I’m not going to recommend to the board that they diminish the resources in 12 schools, if it makes more sense to close one school and keep the resources and supports and challenging, rigorous classes in all of our schools," he said. "That’s really the balancing act that we need to decide. And it’ll all be budget dependent."

Until the approval, Meriden was the only school district of its size to not offer full-day kindergarten to all of its students, according to Connecticut Department of Education data. Members say the board has been discussing the idea to provide all-day kindergarten for the entire district since at least 2005, and possibly before.

Previously, only John Barry School offered all-day kindergarten to Meriden students, serving 12 percent of the city's kindergarteners.

"We've always talked about how our students tend to start off behind, and then as they continue to move through are always playing catch-up. Now 100 percent of our students will have the opportunity to have all-day kindergarten," Hughes said. "They're sponges at that age...that's when we want to get 'em."

Last Updated Tuesday 8:50 p.m.