School officials for Salem, Pelham and Windham schools are breathing a sigh of relief now that the state has agreed to extend the deadline for instituting public kindergarten.

In its definition of an adequate education, the state Legislature included public kindergarten as a requirement.

Since then, 12 communities throughout the state currently without kindergarten have been scrambling to find funding, space and project enrollment and costs to establish kindergarten programs by September 2008.

That deadline has now been extended to 2009, a timeline that seems much more attainable, said Salem Superintendent Michael Delahunty.

The state has also included several funding options in their newest plan, something the 12 towns had been asking for, many of them calling the original kindergarten bill an unfunded mandate.

“I think the Legislature just understood the impracticality of expecting school districts without kindergarten to have something in place by the fall of 2008,” Delahunty said.

He added that the final kindergarten legislation – including acceptable funding options – was not complete until most of the towns had completed their budget processes.

“It will give us the chance to prepare a budget that includes the costs associated with implementing public kindergarten,” Delahunty said, including budgeting for supplies and other operating costs.

While the state will not help towns purchase land for kindergarten facilities, they have offered other funding options, including paying for portable classrooms for four years, paying 75 percent of the building costs for a custom school and footing the bill for all of the building costs for a state-approved school design. The state has also agreed to pay operating costs for kindergarten for the first year.

The state has also offered towns the option of being able to contract with private kindergartens for up to three years while they get their own public programs going.

Towns who have not begun a kindergarten for September 2008 have to submit a plan to the state by December outlining their plans to put the program in place.

“I think we’re very appreciative of the House-Senate bill’s change in its format and in its language because it gives us a little more time and a little more leeway,” said Frank Bass, superintendent of Pelham and Windham schools.

Bass said the Pelham and Windham school boards have not made any hard decisions on which avenues to take in terms of funding and facilities, but said those discussions will happen soon.

Delahunty said the Salem School Board is leaning toward installing portable classrooms on existing school grounds, similar to what is now being used at the high school, only the kindergarten portables would be a little smaller.

Bass and Delahunty were both adamantly against the state forcing public kindergarten on towns without providing the funding for it and on such short notice.

The nine other towns currently without public kindergarten are Hudson, Auburn, Mason, Lyndeborough, Mascenic Regional, Milford, Derry, Litchfield and Chester.