Several years ago, a number of charter schools and school districts decided to take advantage of the law that allowed schools to admit students into kindergarten who were four years old on September 1st, but who turned five before December 31st. This law was actually put in place so that parents who felt their child was ready could begin kindergarten at age four and then move on to 1st grade the next year.
What these charters and districts started doing was accepting four year old children who were not quite ready for kindergarten, and then retaining them at the end of the school year to repeat kindergarten. They even had a name for it, "Early Learners." The schools were then paid twice for kindergarten for these children.
So here is the challenge for the Legislature. It is now 2009 and there are a handful of districts and charters that are having a very large number of children repeat kindergarten - to the tune of approximately $11.2 million. This is not fair to the majority of districts and charters in Arizona who only accept four year olds who are ready for kindergarten. Even though we recognize the benefits of early education for four year olds, having pre-school paid for by the State, under the guise of kindergarten, is not the best use of state resources. If a district or charter wants to offer a tuition-based, pre-school program, we applaud their efforts and encourage them to do so.
There is a very high probability that this program of paying for kindergarten twice will be eliminated under the FY2010 K-12 budget in order to save $11.2 million. The good news is that for most districts and charters in Arizona, they will not see any budget cut as a result of the elimination of this program.
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I am a Mesa district parent with a son who will be turning 5 this fall. It seems this post implies that it will keep parents from enrolling 4 year olds in kindergarten and then again the following year. My question is what about the formal Early Learners program in Mesa’s District. It isn’t kindergarten but a formal program for the children that just miss the cut-off for kindergarten with the intention of beginning kindergarten the following year. Does this post imply that both the informal early learners (those that take kindergarten twice) and formal early learners will be eliminated from the 2010 budget or just the informal early learners? Also does the 2010 budget impact the 2009-2010 school year or the 2010-2011 school year?
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that for most districts and charters in Arizona, they will not see any budget cut as a result of the elimination of this program.
ReplyDeleteHow can you say this. This charter i have my child in will be charging me $675 a month for my child, born on Sept 23rd to attend kindergarden if this program is eliminated. What do you mean by charters will not see a budget cut from this program not being available?