As the September 2009 deadline for instituting public kindergarten in 11 school districts throughout the state approaches, school officials grapple meeting that deadline, space issues, state funding and meeting the deadline.

Some said they have been waiting for possible spring decisions at the state level to reduce the financial impact on school districts.

As it stands, communities beginning kindergarten programs would get 75 percent state aid for building costs or would get all the money to install portable classrooms.

The legislation further promises a 75 percent reimbursement of kindergarten’s first-year operating costs as an incentive to those towns who get kindergarten up and running by September 2008, a year ahead of the state’s set deadline.

Some districts are holding out in hopes the state would grant 100 percent of those costs, arguing the kindergarten legislation is a mandate with no explicit consequence and that is not fully funded.

“You can’t get away from the notion you will be bearing the cost of kindergarten in perpetuity once you get going with it,” said Pelham and Windham Superintendent Frank Bass.

Salem Superintendent Michael Delahunty said a kindergarten committee in the school district has been working on putting public kindergarten in place for the past year and a half or so, before state legislation came forward in July 2007 that defined an adequate education as including public kindergarten.

“I believe that public kindergarten is an essential and necessary part of our obligation to our youth to begin educating them as soon as possible,” Delahunty said, but added the state should remain out of the decision on how to establish such a program.

“I think it’s necessary for a community to determine on its own the manner about which that’s done,” Delahunty said, adding most people see the legislation as an unfunded mandate that contradicts the state’s constitution.

“It sets the community and the state against each other, which is unfortunate,” he said.

While the state has agreed to pay for portable classrooms in the districts, Delahunty said, it has not been realistic about the space constraints associated with their placement on the land at each of Salem’s six elementary schools.

He added there would need to be at least six portables on each plot to accommodate between 280 and 290 students while maintaining the district’s accepted student-teacher ratio for kindergarten of 15 students per teacher.

That’s based on an 80 percent estimate for how many kindergarten-aged students in the district would go to public kindergarten, a figure used by surrounding communities in determining capacity and costs.

Salem’s kindergarten operating costs are expected to run at about $1 million per year, Delahunty said.

Bass said the Pelham and Windham school districts are “nowhere” with public kindergarten at this point because they were waiting to see what the state decides about fully funding kindergarten and on what Pelham voters decided at the polls on March 11 on three articles totalling $50 million in bonds related to building a new high school.

The plans were to build a new Pelham high school, renovate the current one to accommodate middle school students and convert the current Pelham Memorial to an upper elementary school, freeing up Pelham Elementary to include kindergarten through fourth grade.

“I think from our position, we want to create as positive an atmosphere as we can. We want to create as much possibility for change in the law,” Bass said, such as phasing in kindergarten.

Using the same 80 percent turnout estimate, Bass said, Pelham would need to accommodate between 210 and 220 kindergartners. Windham would get about 215 to 225 students.

What operation would cost

The yearly operating costs to each school district are roughly estimated to be between $500,000 and $600,000, he added, which includes salaries and benefits for a projected six teachers in each district, Bass said.

Regardless of what the voters say about it, the affected school districts need to be planning for the onset of public kindergarten, said Pelham School Board Chairman Bruce Couture.

Couture said the Pelham School Board decided not to put kindergarten to voters this year because they decided “not to worry about it until the state comes back with 100 percent funding.”

“If we did end up with 100 (percent), I would certainly feel bad for the communities that went ahead and got the 75 (percent),” Couture said.

With the budget process already completed for the year, and Pelham voters accepting a default budget, Couture said he couldn’t see Pelham instituting public kindergarten before the 2009-10 school year.

Delahunty said Salem may not even be able to implement the program that early. “I can’t say that we’re going to have kindergarten in 2009,” he said.