Windham to use portable classrooms to make room for kindergarteners

Salem Editor — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:42:00 GMT

The Windham School Board has decided on a temporary facilities plan to get kindergarten up and running by the state’s deadline of September 2009.

The board voted unanimously at its meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 16, to place portable classrooms at one or more of the school district’s existing schools, but a definite spot has not yet been selected.

The state would pay for the portables and the materials needed to run them, as well as provide the school district with $1,200 per student for the year in funding.

“The only thing we’d have to pay for would be the cost of the teachers, and the state is providing some incentives there,” said Frank Bass, superintendent for the Pelham and Windham school districts, both of which are on the list of 11 towns who need to begin a public kindergarten program by the start of school in September 2009.

The per-student funding would likely cover the cost of paying teachers’ salaries, leaving little to nothing left for taxpayers’ bills, Bass said.

The $1,200 represents half of the average daily membership, which the state gives to all communities to educate each public school student. Because the state mandates only half-day kindergarten, they will reimburse half.

The New Hampshire Board of Education included at least half-day public kindergarten in its definition of an adequate education during their session in spring 2007, requiring the districts in the state without such programs to get one in place. The other school districts who were without public kindergarten programs at the time the mandate went into effect were Salem, Chester, Litchfield, Derry, Milford, Lyndeborough, Hudson, Auburn and Mascenic Regional.

When it first was set, the mandate was largely unfunded, sparking controversy among those districts without kindergarten. They demanded state funding solutions, and more or less got them.

A long-term solution to kindergarten facilities will include an in-depth study on the Windham School District’s current facilities, looking at enrollment projections, possible upgrades to current buildings, and possibly building new ones.

“We have yet to determine what route we want to take,” said Bass, adding a committee devoted to the facilities study was formed in August.

Communities have been calculating how many students they would need to accommodate in kindergarten programs by taking 80 percent of the amount of children who will be kindergarten age by the time school starts. Using that estimate, Windham would need to make room for about 215 to 225 students.

So far, the Pelham School Board has yet to decide what avenue they will take to begin kindergarten in their district.

“We’re still exploring several options,” Bass said. “I think that will be a running conversation for each and every meeting of the Pelham School Board.”

The state has said they would provide 75 percent in aid for construction costs to build new facilities for the communities facing public kindergarten establishment. This could happen at the same time the communities are receiving the total funding for portables in the short term. All of the 11 school districts without kindergarten have until Dec. 1 to submit their long-term plans for kindergarten to the state.

Windham News : chester

Windham to use portable classrooms to make room for kindergarteners