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Date: 11/5/2015
LONGMEADOW – Free full-day kindergarten for students in the town may become a reality next year, as the School Committee hopes to fund this initiative in the fiscal year 2017 (FY17) budget.
School Committee Chair Janet Robinson said the committee recently voted unanimously to make this issue a priority and to address the topic with the Select Board.
A date for that discussion was tentatively set for the selectmen’s Nov. 16 meeting.
She noted that it could cost an additional $374,742 to implement free full-day kindergarten in the district.
“I’d much rather go ahead and share information with the Select Board and Town Manager [Stephen Crane] now at the beginning of the budget process rather than waiting and us just taking a stand, saying, ‘We as the School Committee feel its important and therefore we’re asking for this additional funding,’” she added.
Robinson said the benefits of funding the initiative include higher academic achievement in later grades, better attendance in kindergarten and through primary grades, faster gains on literacy and languages as opposed to half-day kindergarten, enhanced emotional, social, and behavioral development, and improved transitions into first grade.
She added that Common Core State Standards are based on the assumption that children are attending full-day kindergarten.
Robinson said the School Committee and the Select Board have been more collaborative and collegial in recent years developing budgets and described the relationship as “give and take.”
Town Manager Stephen Crane said the benefits of implementing free full-day kindergarten were made clear to him when Superintendent of Schools Marie Doyle presented the initiative for funding two years ago, but he believes the School Committee must make free full-day kindergarten work within the district’s budget.
The implementation of full-day kindergarten has been an ongoing topic during the past several years. In February, the School Committee reduced the full day kindergarten tuition by $250 from $3,000 per student each year to $2,750 in the FY16 budget.
“I also believe that we should be working towards making it free, but it is a gradual transition because of the cost to do it,” Crane said. “I think the School Committee has, in successive years, lowered the tuition. The cost of implementing it is significant, but it’s gone down a little bit from when it was first proposed.”
The citizen’s action group Residents for Equality in Kindergarten Education in Longmeadow has been vocal in recent years about fully funding the initiative. Stephanie Jasmin, the group’s founder, called for the addition of $407,459 to the school department’s FY15 budget to fund free full-day kindergarten during the 2014 Annual Town Meeting, however the amendment failed. Jasmin also made an amendment to the FY16 school budget the following year, which was shot down by voters during the 2015 Annual Town Meeting.
“Town Meeting has said two years in a row, loud and clear, that they don’t value kindergarten tuition over their municipal services,” Crane said.
Jasmin told Reminder Publications she is pleased with the School Committee’s support on the issue.
“Massachusetts towns have been phasing in free full-day kindergarten for over 15 years,” she added. “Longmeadow now stands as the only town in Western Massachusetts that charges for it.”
Jasmin said there are several bills currently circulating in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate, which would mandate free full-day kindergarten.
“The time to phase it in has passed,” Jasmin said. “Ninety-two percent of Massachusetts kindergarten children attended a full day program last year and 85 percent of them did not pay tuition. Full-day kindergarten needs to be included in Longmeadow school’s budget for FY17 and the town and school need to work together to make that happen. It cannot wait another year.”
Robinson also addressed the issue of state mandated free full-day kindergarten
“Do we want to be ahead of the curve and already be offering such a program or do we want to wait until it’s going to be an unfunded state mandate that we have to provide it?” she added.
According to information from Early Education for All, 242 communities in the Commonwealth offered full-day kindergarten tuition free during the 2012-2013 school year. That number jumped to 262 communities during the 2014-2015 school year.