School Board to Vote on All-Day Kindergarten Tuesday

The school Finance Committee Tuesday night voted to recommend making kindergarten full day city wide. The measure has already been approved by the Curriculum Committee. It will go before the full board on Tuesday, December 20, for a final vote.

Moving to all-day kindergarten city-wide will cost the school system about $95,660 a year, Assistant Superintendent for Finance Michael Grove informed the committee.

If the city kept its APPLE preschool program, which it currently offers to 210 students free of charge, including transportation, the yearly cost for all-day K would be upwards of $500,000, Grove said. But the APPLE program is being eliminated and its teachers and paraprofessionals will be transitioned into kindergarten classrooms, drastically reducing the cost associated with bringing all-day kindergarten to the Silver City.

"We were the only district in the state providing that service," School Superintendent Mark Benigni said of the free APPLE program with transportation. That program is intended for academically at-risk children. "Over time we saw that we weren't getting the neediest students," Benigni said.

Benigni acknowledged the benefits of a strong preschool experience and recommended that children who would have enrolled in the APPLE program seek out other school-readiness options offered by the city. There are 160 open pre-K slots in the city right now, he reported, and school administrators are working on plans to create more early learning opportunities.

Four kindergarten teachers and four paraprofessionals will have to be hired to make the full-day K program work, Grove explained. Some teaching positions elsewhere in the district will be eliminated to free up the money for the kindergarten teachers. The costs for the additional paras constitutes the $95,660 added expense.

John Barry Elementary is currently the only school in the city offering full-day kindergarten. Next year, every elementary school except the very overcrowded Pulaski school will house its own all-day K program, should the measure be approved. Pulaski students will attend kindergarten at Hanover Elementary. A new wing is being added to Hanover to accommodate the new all-day kindergarten program. A groundbreaking ceremony for the construction will take place this Friday at 2 p.m. Some of the Hanover kindergarten students will be housed in temporary classrooms until construction is complete in early 2013, Grove said.

No additional transportation costs are associated with expanding kindergarten to an all-day format. If anything, the school system may even save money on transportation, Benigni said.