Under the gun to put in place a public kindergarten by September of next year, School Board members are leaning toward accepting the state’s offer of leasing portable classrooms.

“In order to have something in place by next fall, it appears right now that the board is going to pursue an option to take advantage of the state’s option to pay the cost of leasing temporary classrooms,” said Superintendent Michael Delahunty. “We have a group of people looking at a long-term solution for kindergarten, whether that is renovations and additions to existing schools or some other options. The notion is to use the temporary classrooms for the length of time necessary and within a few years have some more permanent solution.”

The School District’s director of maintenance has surveyed each of the town’s six elementary schools to pinpoint locations for the temporary classrooms, Delahunty said. Over the course of the next few months, officials will begin making plans to ensure the classrooms will be hooked up to the proper utilities.

Leasing portable classrooms to make space available in Salem’s six elementary schools for the influx of new students is just one of several state funded options available to Salem and the other 12 communities – including nearby Windham and Pelham – without public kindergartens state-wide.

The state has also offered to paying the construction costs of a new state-approved school design and 75 percent of the price tag for a custom-designed school. Communities also have the option of contracting with private kindergartens for up to three years as they arrange for their own publicly funded program.

Funding from the state will also cover the first-year operating costs of a new kindergarten program.

In return, the towns not planning on opening a kindergarten by this September – the date set in the original state legislation before the one year extension was granted last month – must have a plan to do so into the state Board of Education by Dec. 1 of this year.

Public support for the new state-mandated kindergarten is mixed, Delahunty said, but he remains optimistic that Salem will have a kindergarten by September of 2009.

“Parents of children coming to 5 years of age are very supportive. The people who tend to be unsupportive are those who have already had their children go through the system and feel that they don’t have an obligation to provide a kindergarten now that the community did not provide then,” he said. “I believe the community is ready to support a public kindergarten. I think having some temporary classrooms paid for by the state and then operating costs paid by the state for the first several years will help minimize the costs and make the community ready.”

Peter Morgan, a member of the School Board, has found public support for a kindergarten as long as the state lends a helping financial hand. The prohibitive cost of beginning a kindergarten program has kept the town’s taxpayers from moving in that direction in the past.

“There are some very motivated people who would like to see kindergarten, but since property tax funds everything, implementing a kindergarten (is) an expensive proposition,” Morgan said. “No one denies that kindergarten is a good thing. Everyone believes kindergarten is a good thing.”

Legislation amending the state’s definition of an adequate public education to include the kindergarten level of schooling came in 2007. For 20 years, New Hampshire had been the only state in the country not to do so, according to Helen Schotanus, curriculum supervisor at the state Board of Education.

“Everywhere else it’s obvious that kids who attend kindergarten do better than kids who don’t. Children who attend public kindergarten do better than kids in private kindergartens,” said Schotanus, who has been an advocate of mandatory publicly funded kindergartens on the state board. “(It is) to do better by our young children. A good kindergarten is a foundation. It is so obvious that kids do better when they have a good kindergarten to go into.”

While the legislation does not specify a consequence for failing to implement a publicly funded kindergarten, Schotanus said the towns that chose not to do so would have to answer to the board.

“At some point, the community will decide whether it wants publicly funded kindergarten and if people understand the value of formal and public education ... then they’ll agree it’s time the community provided that,” Delahunty said. “Having a program for 5-year-olds is beneficial to the community as a whole.”