All-day kindergarten to end next fall in Puyallup

All-day kindergarten will be absent from Puyallup next school year at a time when Tacoma and other school districts are expanding it.

Puyallup School District administrators have decided against continuing the six-year-old program as they prepare to close a revenue shortfall of at least $10 million in their budget.

Offering full-day kindergarten will cost the district about $114,000 this school year, and probably would have cost more in 2009-10, said district spokeswoman Karen Hansen.

Administrators wanted to inform parents about the status of the all-day program since registration for next fall’s kindergarten starts in March.

“The program is highly successful. Studies have proven that providing students access to early learning programs positively affects their student achievement in later years,” Hansen said. “Although we would prefer to offer all-day kindergarten, it is not possible given our current financial constraints.”

The state funds regular, half-day kindergarten for all public school children. Schools offering all-day programs typically impose a tuition fee or use designated state dollars or grants to pay for the remaining part of the day.

Puyallup charges families $225 a month per child for the full-day classes, but reduces that by half for low-income families and waives fees entirely for the poorest families. Administrators expect more families would qualify for the waivers and reduced fees next year.

The district began offering all-day kindergarten in the 2003-04 school year. It’s so popular that prospective students are chosen by lottery. This year, a total of about 250 youngsters participate at nine of the district’s 22 elementary schools.

The cancellation is a big disappointment to parents including Amy Dedominicis. Her son is in the program at Ridgecrest Elementary School this year, and she had hoped to enroll her daughter next school year.

“My son loves all-day kindergarten,” she said. “The earlier you get them started and enjoying it, the better off they’ll be later on.”

Eliminating the program will go against the statewide trend of expanding all-day classes. A two-year-old state initiative is supporting the program at 222 schools in 109 of the state’s 295 school districts this year, according to the state superintendent of public instruction.

But while the long-term goal is to fund the effort in all districts, the state is starting at schools with the highest rate of low-income children, including some in the Tacoma, Clover Park and Franklin Pierce districts.

Puyallup doesn’t yet have schools that qualify for those dollars. It had been subsidizing its full-day program with a separate state pot of money that can be used to reduce class size and for several other purposes. Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget proposal would reduce those so-called “Initiative 728” funds by 21 percent.

“If the state funded all-day kindergarten” for Puyallup, Hansen said, “there is certainly a possibility that the program could again be offered.”

Parents might wonder whether the district’s $257 million school construction bond or $57 million small projects levy on the March 10 ballot could help with kindergarten and other costs. The answer is no. If the measures pass, the money must be spent on building projects listed in the measures, not on instruction.

Dedominicis wishes Puyallup would have given parents earlier notice so families could have tried to find a solution.

Hansen said the decision happened recently during ongoing budget deliberations.

So why not charge more to fully fund the program?

Hansen said choosing children by lottery ensures that everyone gets a chance to enroll, regardless of income. But it also means the number of parents paying full tuition can vary.

“It is conceivable that 100 percent of the students in a class might be eligible for free or reduced tuition – providing no financial resources for the program,” she said.

Debby Abe: 253-597-8694