Shortchanging Kindergarten

A recent story from Minneapolis shows how early education investments are suffering in the face of state and local belt-tightening. Two-thirds of kindergarteners in the Minneapolis Public Schools are in free full-day kindergarten classes. But in February, the school board there began considering a proposal to charge parents for full-day kindergarten according to a sliding-fee scale (parents pay different fees based on their incomes). Minneapolis officials say adopting the proposal would allow the district to expand quality early education programs to the city’s 3,000 kindergarteners. But another motivation is the $500,000 the proposal would add to district coffers–in a year when the district faces a $13 million budget shortfall.

This is a step backwards on the district’s promising path towards universal, full-day kindergarten. Research shows that full-day kindergarten has a positive impact on later academic performance, especially for kids from low-income backgrounds. In 2002, a district assessment found that full-day kindergarten was helping narrow literacy skills gaps for minority, low-income students enrolled in Minneapolis’ full-day kindergarten classrooms, even as the program also benefitted non-minority students. Requiring some parents to pay for full-day kindergarten could undermine this progress.

Nationally, about 65 percent of kindergarteners attend full-day programs. But many states create a disincentive for local districts to provide full-day programs by providing the same amount of per-pupil funding regardless of whether kindergarteners are enrolled in full- or part-day programs.

Moreover, too many policymakers at both the state and local level continue to view full-day kindergarten as a luxury–making it one of the first things that gets cut when budgets are tight. Proposals to charge parents for full-day kindergarten reflect this same mentality. Districts wouldn’t dream of charging parents for the afternoon hours of first-grade to make a buck or two. But when it comes to kindergarten, they can, and they do.

Minneapolis isn’t the only district that charges parents for full-day kindergarten. Seattle Public Schools, which also once offered free full-day kindergarten, switched to a sliding-scale “pay-for-k” system in 1998 because of the $1.6 million annual cost. Today it offers just one free all-day class per school. The town of Winona, Minn., ended its universal full-day kindergarten program entirely in 2005 to nurse a $1.5 million budget deficit. Fortunately, Winona voters are smarter than their school board, and the following year passed a referendum to restore funding for the program. Elsewhere in the country, plans to implement free full-day programs have been temporarily shelved due to funding constraints. Fee-based programs are a popular alternative and easy-out, but they come with a hefty price tag for parents–$2,000 to $4,000 a year.

There are other options. Surveys show that there is overwhelming support (in Minnesota and across the country) for full-day kindergarten. Next door to Minneapolis, the St. Paul Public Schools harnessed this support to pass a 2006 referendum that included $2.3 million for universal full-day kindergarten. School districts in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and elsewhere have done the same thing. Even better would be secure state funding for full-day kindergarten, which would help increase participation in full-day kindergarten programs for those who need it most.

Elsewhere, the courts have intervened. In Indiana and Ohio, courts and attorneys general have ruled that fee-based programs are illegal, saying schools cannot charge fees when school facilities, equipment, and personnel are used. But we shouldn’t need ad hoc legal rulings or referendums to make full-day kindergarten a budget priority. As long as full-day programs are in funding limbo, the risk of shortchanging kindergarten will remain.