PORT ANGELES — Full-day kindergarten will return to Port Angeles School District — but it will cost parents who must pay tuition.

The School Board approved the tuition model Monday in a 4-1 vote, with Vice President Lonnie Linn voting against the measure.

The tuition for full-day kindergarten would range from $30 per month to $280 per month. Half-day kindergarten is funded by the state, but no half-day alternative will be offered at the Port Angeles schools.

The board did not decide what will happen to children whose parents do not want them in the full-day program or who do not want to pay.

The motion was made by board member Patti Happe and seconded by board member Nancy McLaughlin.

“We know that all-day kindergarten is the right thing to do for the kids,” Happe said.

Board President Steve Baxter said it was a difficult decision.

“I’m not in favor of people having to pay at all,” he said. “But if we are going to offer higher-quality, more robust program this is how it has to be.

“We want them all to have this opportunity.”

No half-day programs

The board determined that limited half-day programs should not be considered.

“To me this is an all-or-nothing thing,” Cindy Kelly said.

“For me, I need to know if we are all committed to this to the point that we’re willing to go into reserves if there is a shortage.”

She received no verbal response, but the three other board members who later voted with Kelly in favor of implementing the program, nodded.

Tuition range

Tuition will be $280 per month for those who don’t qualify for assistance.

For those who qualify for reduced-priced lunches, the tuition will be $140 per month, and for those who qualify for free lunch it will be $30 per month.

Baxter said district staff members are considering ways to help the families who don’t qualify for help but who still would struggle to pay.

“We haven’t worked that out yet,” he said. “The staff is working on that as we speak.”

He said the district staff also is considering how to collect from parents and how to get the word out.

The 2008-2009 school year was the first year that the district offered full-day kindergarten.

The School Board had voted to return to extended-day kindergarten — which is a half-day, with extra help for those who need it — after the state Legislature eliminated funding from Initiative 728, which voters passed in 2000 to fund programs such as all-day kindergarten and to reduce class size.

The state Legislature funds half-day kindergarten. At least a half-day of kindergarten is required for students in Washington state.

Registration for kindergarten is ongoing, so the enrollment levels will be unclear until the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year, Baxter said.

The tuition is about the same as day care would cost, said Mark Jacobson, district business director, who conducted a market analysis.

It is based on an expected participation rate of 90 percent of the 2007-2008 kindergarten enrollment, Jacobson said.

Baxter said there are many precedents in the state for this type of program.

Linn, who sat covering his face with his hands for much of the discussion, has said multiple times in board meetings that full-day kindergarten shouldn’t be implemented until the state Legislature funds it.

All students

All of the elementary school principals attended the meeting and stood together at the podium to ask the board to implement full-day kindergarten — but only if it were for all students.

The original proposal presented by Superintendent Gary Cohn was to have two classrooms of half-day kindergarten.

Assistant Superintendent Mary Hebert said that the concern was that the students in those programs would fall further behind.

The principals also expressed the same concern.

“Our worry is that the divide that will get created we will spend all of the first grade trying to make up for that gap,” Franklin Elementary Principal Nancy Pack said.

“We would like to see all-day kindergarten for everybody.

“If that cannot be done, then we would like to return to the extended day model. The gaps will simply be too hard to close,” Pack added.

Happe argued that — although there was potential for creating inequities, depending on how the district later decides to handle students whose parents don’t want to or feel they cannot pay — inequities already existed, she said.

“The parents who can afford to are already sending their children to day care and they end up ahead of the students who are in a shortened program,” Happe said.

In favor of tuition

Parents Michelle Turner and Daniel Wolfe both spoke in favor of the tuition-based kindergarten.

“I would see returning to a 2 1/2 hour day of kindergarten would be a massive regression,” Turner said.

“I know that it will never be quite equitable, but we feel really strongly that if this is not an option, my child will be going to Queen of Angels School.”

Wolfe said he was concerned that children who leave for full-day kindergarten might not return to the district.

“For my daughter, it might be difficult once she is established, and we are networked within the Queen of Angels community, that it will be hard to pull her out next year to go back to public schools,” he said.

“How many other parents are thinking the same thing?”

Both said that five other families they had talked to were in the same situation and were hoping that the tuition-based kindergarten would pass so that they could put their children into the public school system.

Michele Haworth, who said that her children all went through the half-day program, spoke against the issue.

“I just can’t see how it will be good to implement a program that is not sustainable,” she said.

“You hear about the children who are doing so great reading, but what about those kids that are too tired to go on a play date after school because it was just too much for them to handle? Those you don’t hear about.”

Because many details are not yet available, parents of next year’s kindergartners are asked to phone the district office at 360-457-8575 and leave their contact information so they can be directly contacted as soon as details are available.

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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.