Full Day Kindergarten?

Tonight at (my first) Board meeting, we discussed the desire to offer full day kindergarten. There are some challenges to doing this, not the least of which is financial. The biggest costs are facilities and staff. At the same time, we know that parents really want this option, so we want to see how we might be able to do this.

We've asked the administration to explore a possible public-private partnership. the concept is that the district would offer a half-day program, but would partner directly with a private party to offer the "afternoon" part of the program. The first part is pretty simple- it's what we already do. The second part is basically enrolling a student in a private program where the district rents the space, but doesn't directly manage the program. It would be up to the private party to supply the second half of the day.

This all implies that there would be cost to the parents, which is essentially unavoidable in the current environment. However, that would hopefully be a modest cost.

I want to stress that this is in the investigation phase. However, it was interesting enough that we're willing to look at it and see what we might be able to do. More details will be available at the Jan 11 Board meeting. I can't make any promises whatsoever. However, I'm excited that we're trying to see what we can do.