The Nevada Department of Education is providing additional funding for full-day kindergarten, expanding the program for this school year, to nine more schools. Some say the program offers important early childhood education that pays off down the road.
"It really does help our students get a great extra start going into first grade," Kristen McNeill, WCSD Chief of Staff said. "Our kindergartners are reading when they leave first grade."
Parents that have children enrolled in full-day kindergarten in the impacted schools will be reimbursed for the tuition they have already paid. The rest of the school year will be free. Almost all of Washoe County's elementary schools have full-day kindergarten, but some have to keep half-day kindergarten in place, simply because there's not enough space for everyone to enroll in the program.
"Instead of having two sessions of AM and PM, you now need to have two classrooms because the AM session is going to go full-day and that PM session is going to go full-day," McNeill said.
41 schools already offer free full-day kindergarten, either because they're at risk or qualify as Title I schools. Of the school district's 64 elementary schools, 11 still have to pay $65 per week for the program. That includes Hunsberger Elementary school, where Anh Trang and Celeste Shapiro both have children enrolled in the full-day program.
"I'm grateful that we do have the option of letting our kids go full-day but I don't understand why they don't have to pay for it and we do," Trang said.
"We're fortunate enough to be able to afford it but it is upsetting to me that others can't benefit from that if they do have a financial hardship," Shapiro said.
Some ask why that funding can't be used to lower the tuition for everyone that pays instead of the "all or nothing" approach. Part of the reason is because there aren't enough teacher allocations to go around.
"It's better to fund a school with one particular funding source, rather than to piece meal it together," McNeill said.
McNeill says the school district is funding as many schools as possible, this year. What happens, next year, remains to be seen because we still don't know what the state's money situation will be. The legislature meets in February and that could determine how full-day kindergarten is funded for the next biennium.
