Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti was clear about one thing Friday (Feb. 21): the Board of Education won’t be getting the $3.5 million funding increase it requested last month.
“That’s not going to happen,” the mayor said.
Lauretti said the school board will get “some sort of increase,” but whether it will be enough to fund a full-day kindergarten program supported by the Board of Education and hundreds of parents remains to be seen.
On Thursday, about 60 people gathered in the Shelton Intermediate School auditorium to hear a presentation by school officials about why they want to implement full-day kindergarten for the 2014 – 2015 school year.
About 150 people attended a similar meeting on the subject the week before, school officials said.
The concept of full-day kindergarten has been a topic of discussion in Shelton for years, but a renewed push for a full-day program began when parents contacted school board members last year asking for them to see if the city could offer it.
The school board then formed an ad hoc committee to discuss the issue and last month the full school board approved full-day kindergarten as part of its budget request for 2014 – 2015.
How Much Would This Cost?
Schools Superintendent Freeman Burr began Thursday’s meeting with an overview of the school budget proposal, with specific details about how the district plans on implementing full-day kindergarten.
Burr said the “total implementation cost” of full-day kindergarten would be about $948,000.
But in order to trim that down, the school district would reallocate five elementary teachers and ask the city to pick up about $200,000 in one-time costs for furniture, fixtures, and equipment to its capital budget.
The resulting “adjusted cost” for full-day kindergarten would be about $368,000, he said.
Click the play button below to see Burr’s presentation. Article continues after the video.
School Officials: It Saves Money
Tina Henckel, the school system’s director of STEM and data management, and Kristen Santilli, supervisor of literacy, assessments, and professional learning, followed up Burr’s remarks with research they said showed full-day kindergarten would save the city money in the long run.
“If you invest in a program that is of high quality and rigorous for students, in the long run you see an investment return of three-to-one,” Henckel said.
Article continues after video showing a portion of Henckel’s presentation.
That would result in fewer students needing “intervention” when falling behind, she said, as well as a lower rate of dropouts and students being held back grades — all things that end up costing taxpayers more in the long run.
Henckel also noted that the trend both nationwide and in Connecticut is toward offering full-day kindergarten.
Statewide, she noted 110 out of Connecticut’s 169 school districts offer full-day kindergarten.
In Fairfield County, Shelton is the only municipality that doesn’t offer a full-day program to kindergartners, she said.
Santilli offered a side-by-side comparison of schedules for half- and full-day kindergarten programs, noting that over the course of a school year.
The slides used in the presentation are posted below. Article continues after the document.
FDK Revised Presentation February 2014
Not surprisingly, a full-day program would result in more than double the learning time for children as opposed to a half-day program.
That would help teachers give more time to teaching subjects like social studies and science, which right now have to be “embedded” into learning time for other topics, she said.
“The teachers are really struggling to get and fit all of the curricula into the day and the school year,” Santilli said.
Click the play button below to see a portion of Santilli’s remarks. Article continues after the video.
Parents In Favor
Parents who spoke during Thursday’s meeting were universally in favor of full-day kindergarten.
Michele Bialek, a parent and member of the ad hoc committee formed last year, said the important thing for parents to do now is contact Lauretti and their Aldermen and tell them they should fund the schools’ request.
“This is a necessity at this point. It’s not something nice to have, it’s not a bonus, it’s not something that makes us look good — it’s a necessity,” Bialek said.
Lori McKeon, another parent and member of the ad hoc committee, noted that the city has surpluses in its budget year after year, usually in the millions of dollars.
“We as a city can afford full-day kindergarten,” McKeon said. “So I would encourage all of you, as politely and as politically correct as possible, to contact your aldermen.”
“We’ve been asking for this for years,” McKeon went on, challenging elected officials to hammer out the details to make it happen. “We have the money, we have the curriculum, we have the support of the Board of Education and all of it’s administrators. I’ve yet to meet a teacher who has told me that full-day kindergarten is not the way to go. So what is stopping us?”
Debbie Alain, the parent of a 4‑year-old entering kindergarten next year, attended Thursday’s meeting and echoed McKeon’s sentiments.
“We have the money. Let’s do it,” Alain said.
“The expectations for kindergarten are night and day from what they were years ago,” Alain went on. “If they don’t get full-time kindergarten, they’re trying to learn so much in so little time. They’re not getting everything they need to know, so once they start first grade, they’re behind.”
Mayor Weighs In
Lauretti on Friday noted that the city can’t direct the Board of Education how specifically to spend its money.
“It’s not a decision that I’ll make, so it’ll be more about the dollar amount that education will get,” he said. “The Board of Education can spend the money they way they want to spend it. The only role I have is what the bottom line is.”
In that respect, the mayor said he won’t make a decision on how much of an increase to recommend for the school system until he digs into the numbers more.
“Philosophically I’m not opposed to (full-day kindergarten) but I don’t think it’s as catastrophic as some people make it out to be,” Lauretti said.
But isn’t it embarrassing that every municipality in Fairfield County except for Shelton offers full-day kindergarten?
“There’s a lot of things that Shelton does that other communities don’t do, and vice-versa,” Lauretti said.
The mayor said he will meet with Burr this week to discuss the school budget proposal in detail.
Lauretti will present a budget request to the Board of Apportionment and Taxation and the Board of Aldermen next month.
From there, the tax board will review it and make a budget recommendation to the Board of Aldermen, who must pass a spending plan by mid-May, per the city’s charter.
Board of Education Chairman Mark Holden said at Thursday’s meeting that even if the Aldermen do not vote to give the schools its full funding request, the school board will do what they can to implement the program.
“If we can make full-day kindergarten happen, we will make full-day kindergarten happen,” he said.
