However you feel about full-day Kindergarten, certainly we all agree that it is more expensive than a half-day program. The New York State Board of Education recommends a full-day program, and has put its money where its mouth is by offering state aid for schools that transition to FDK. When Scotia-Glenville switched to FDK last year, they received over $800,000 from the state. Niskayuna would receive an estimated $619,423 if the district switched in 2011-2012.
But since we're talking money, it's only fair to discuss the financial reasons that now is a particularly bad year to expand the budget or count on state aid. Going back to Scotia-Glenville, the Daily Gazette reports that within the very year they made the switch, they found themselves with not enough budget, looking for ways to save. Not wanting to look flaky, they decided not to switch back to HDK after only a year, and instead cut expenses in other places. That is, they ended up paying for FDK by making cuts in other places, despite $800,000 in state aid.
Governor Patterson has suggested that in order to start Governor-elect Cuomo out right, he would cut the state aid to education in order to balance the sickly state budget. If state aid is reduced mid-year, the $619,000 would not last nearly as long as the district's report estimates. Governor Cuomo, for his part, has publicly declared that he will seek a 2% cap on property tax increases. This means that the $320,000/year that FDK costs, which seems small when you talk about it as only 0.5%of the budget, is actually going to be 25% of the allowable budget expansion.
The uncertainty in the state budget this year makes 2011-2012 a particularly bad year to count on state aid and expand the budget. A change to FDK will not be reversed. Before we believe the district's report which claims a 3-year average cost of only $78,000, let's get real and admit that this is a $320,000+ expansion of the budget that will never go away. Let's not use optimistic math that depends on stable state aid to justify such a large, recurring expense.
I agree. This is going to be a new 320k (and growing) cost to the district going forward. As I understand it, the "optimistic math" in the district analysis to which you refer is based on the argument that the pension contributions will not be increasing as much 3 years from now as they are today, and that this fact will allow money to be available for funding the full-day kindergarten program. Its likely I am missing something (please help me out here), but this seems to have nothing to do with the choice to switch to FDK and so it seems disingenuous to include it in an analysis of the financial impact of the decision.
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