Two Auburn Budget Committee members have changed their minds and are now recommending a warrant article that would fund state-mandated public kindergarten. They changed their votes upon getting new information from the state the day after their decision.

The Joint Legislative Committee on Costing an Adequate Education released its final report on Friday, Feb. 1, on the costs associated with an adequate education, which the Legislature redefined in June 2007 to include requiring half-day kindergarten for 11 districts in the state without it.

While those towns are already slated to receive 75 percent of the building and renovation costs for starting up kindergarten, the report also offers an incentive for first-year operating costs for those districts that start kindergarten in September 2008.

Making that deadline would give Auburn taxpayers an extra $95,040 in kindergarten aid on top of the 75 percent state aid already promised, according to the report, information that caused Budget Committee members David Dion and Jim Headd, the selectmen’s representative to the committee, to change their votes to “yes.”

The Joint Legislative Committee came up with a figure of $3,456 to educate one student for a year under the state’s new definition of educational adequacy.

Auburn kindergartners will each get half of that amount, or about $1,700, as half-day students. The $95,040 incentive represents the total Auburn will get for the projected 55 kindergartners.

At a meeting on Jan. 31, the Budget Committee voted 5-2 not to recommend the article, which called for $382,833 for renovation costs and $111,660 for first-year operating costs. The Joint Legislative Committee’s report came out the next day.

At the Budget Committee’s next meeting on Thursday, Feb. 7, the vote to recommend passed 4-3. The 75 percent reimbursement for the building costs plus the $95,040 the state would commit to Auburn brings the taxpayers’ burden down to about $112,328 total, provided kindergarten is in place by September 2008.

Both Headd, a state representative, and Dion said they are still against public kindergarten, calling it an unfunded mandate, but both also said they realized it was still a mandate and didn’t want to miss out on the funding. Headd said he is still against kindergarten because it may put Auburn’s three private kindergartens out of business and creates long-term burden on taxpayers, adding he plans to speak on the House floor this spring to get all costs for kindergarten funded.

“I am dead set against the state mandating that we have any kindergarten at all,” Headd said. “I am going to ask the Legislature, when the time is proper, that they fund 100 percent of the obligation they have forced upon us.”

While some of the 11 affected districts will not be able to open up kindergarten in the coming school year, Dion pointed out the others will be going for the funding at the same time as Auburn.

Headd said his vote only secures some first-year funding, and it’s now up to the voters to decide whether kindergarten is successfully established.

“The big issue is the people still have the right to turn it down,” he said. “I don’t like anyone forcing anything down my people’s throats. If the people of Auburn say we want it, the people’s wishes should be granted.”