When Auburn Village School Principal Anita Johnson moved to New Hampshire from the Midwest in 1978, she was shocked to find Auburn had no public kindergarten. The possibility that a public program didn’t exist had never occurred to her.

“It’s like if you’re buying a house. Do you ask if there’s a bathroom? No,” she said, “No. You ask ‘How many?’”

In 1978, New Hampshire and Mississippi were the last states in the union to require public kindergarten.

Fast-forward nearly 30 years.

Mississippi has long since followed suit with the rest of the 48 states, and Auburn is one of about a dozen communities in the state – including nearby Salem, Pelham and Windham – without public kindergarten.

But the New Hampshire House has proposed a court-ordered definition of an “adequate education” that includes a mandatory half-day kindergarten.

While the definition still must survive the scrutiny of the New Hampshire Senate and Gov. John Lynch, public kindergarten may be on Auburn’s horizon, whether voters there like it or not.

“I’d love to see it,” said Johnson.

“It’s been very slow coming in New Hampshire. It’s just part of the culture.”

In the mid-1990s, a majority of Auburn voters denied proposal to add a half-day kindergarten program to the district. Current Auburn School Board Chairman Elaine Hobbs remembers being a part of a kindergarten committee then when her son was 4 years old. He’s now a freshman in high school.

Hobbs said there haven’t been any formal proposals for kindergarten since the mid- 1990s vote because of another lingering issue – overcrowding at Auburn Village School.

“(Kindergarten) kind of took a spot on the back burner at that time,” Hobbs said. “The thinking was if we can alleviate the overcrowding at AVS, then we could think about public kindergarten.”

But several new school or joint school proposals have since fallen by the wayside, leaving the prospect of kindergarten stranded on that “back burner,” Hobbs said.

The board has recently been focusing on its partnership with neighboring Candia for a middle school, whereby Auburn would build a new school which Candia students would attend based on a long-term tuition agreement.

The Auburn School Board hopes to have a bond proposal for a new school at the 2008 annual School District Meeting.

Hobbs said the board hasn’t even had time to project the costs of a new kindergarten, though the state would cover 75 percent of initial kindergarten construction costs.

“We haven’t spent a whole lot of time and money studying that right now,” she said.

For some residents, Auburn’s lack of public kindergarten continues to be a black eye.

“I think it’s a disgrace to be one of 13 towns in the nation without it,” said Deb Cheetham, the mother of an AVS student.

Cheetham said many area parents can’t easily afford spending several hundred dollars a month to send their children to kindergarten, plus the added costs of day care either before or after the half-day programs available at several area private preschool and kindergarten providers.

When children finally do start first grade, she said, “You could have a child that’s been in preschool three years, and a child with no school.”

Cheetham and Johnson both praised Auburn’s private kindergarten providers – the Auburn Village Children’s Center, Tiny Tots Preschool and Kindergarten and the Auburn Montessori School – for the quality of education they provide, but Johnson said she gets several incoming students each year who’ve had no classroom experience. She also said first-graders come in from as many as 25 different area kindergarten providers.

Auburn Village Childrens Center Director Marjorie Fowler said the center currently has 19 kindergarten students, and in the fall will be expanding its half-day kindergarten sessions to a full-day program, a move that’s becoming more common in public kindergartens throughout the country.

The full-day program will cost $390 a month, she said.

Fowler said she’d hate to lose the business if public kindergarten was forced on Auburn by the state, but also said it would be a “great thing.”

Fowler also said kindergartners make up only a fraction of the business – 71 children attend preschool at the center – and said if that segment is lost, the center could focus more on preschool programs for younger students.

“I would miss my kindergarten teacher,” she said.

Hobbs, who was initially drawn into Auburn school affairs because of the kindergarten issue, said the School Board now is heavily in favor of instituting a public kindergarten program.

And if the House’s definition of an adequate education is altered to remove kindergarten, or if it fails at the hands of the Senate, kindergarten would still be a vital issue locally, Hobbs said, especially if voters approve a new school proposal that would take sixth- through eighth-graders out of Auburn Village School.

“(Instituting kindergarten) would be a board decision, and then, ultimately, a community decision,” she said.