SD2 starts juggling kindergarten

By LAURA TODE
Of The Gazette Staff - May 16, 2007

Now that lawmakers have approved funding for full-day kindergarten, Billings School District 2 officials are racing to implement the program in Billings this fall.

Parents will be able to choose between full- or half-day kindergarten for their children.

Legislators cleared the way for full-day kindergarten Friday. Earlier this week, SD2 officials began calling parents with children registered for kindergarten next fall to see how much classroom space and how many teachers will be needed. But only about one-third of the children expected to show up this fall have registered.

Of the parents contacted so far, about 97 percent said they would prefer full-day kindergarten, said Kathy Olson, the district's elementary education director. That means half-day kindergarten may not be offered at all sites.

If this fall's kindergarten enrollment is similar to the current school year, as many as 20 new kindergarten teachers may be needed, Olson said.

Full-day kindergarten will add the equivalent of at least 500 students to the district, which will add about $2 million to the elementary district's general fund in the form of per-student state funding. Most of that money will be used to hire the additional teachers.

The district will get another $1.2 million in start-up funds for full-day kindergarten from the state this fall, which will be used to set up classrooms and buy equipment and technology.

Although districts are not required to offer full-day kindergarten, the new law says the state will pay for students who do attend. Previously, the state would only pay half the per-student rate for kindergarten students, even in districts that offered full-day kindergarten.

The state funding package includes a 3.1 percent increase in funding for the next school year. That's an increase of about a $1 million for the high school district and $3.4 million for the elementary district. In the second year of the biennium, schools will receive a 1.56 percent increase.

Those figures are similar to those proposed by Gov. Brian Schweitzer before the 2007 Legislature, which are the figures district officials have been using in their budget projections since January.

The district will also receive about $1.4 million in one-time funds earmarked for capital improvement projects and deferred maintenance. The funding is based on a "per-unit" entitlement. The state estimated the units based on the assumption that there is a building for every 250 elementary students, for every 450 middle school students and for every 800 high school students. Each unit will receive about $33,500.

Superintendent Jack Copps said the per-unit funding will help with remodeling at Beartooth Elementary, which will be reopened this fall to serve students in kindergarten through sixth grades.

Beartooth was closed in 2001 when enrollments were lower. Since then, about 174 students have been added to Heights schools.

Reopening the school will cost about $1.4 million for staffing, books, supplies, teaching materials and technology. That money was approved by voters in the mill levy election last week.

Opening Beartooth will balance enrollment in Heights schools, which have been overcrowded for several years, and many of the schools have not had room for kindergarten students.

When Beartooth is reopened, all kindergarten students in the Heights will attend their neighborhood schools.

In some areas of the district, implementing full-day kindergarten will be more of a challenge.

Although much depends on enrollment, Olson estimated that only nine of the district's 21 elementary schools have the space for full-day kindergarten.

The district intends to use Rimrock Elementary, also closed in 2001, as a kindergarten satellite site and is moving forward with plans to outfit 11 classrooms to house kindergarten students from Highland, McKinley, Miles, Arrowhead, Broadwater and Burlington elementary schools.

The children will be bused from their home school to Rimrock. Crowding has already forced Arrowhead kindergarteners to be bused to Boulder, where renovations last year added classroom space.

Recent expansion and renovations at Orchard added 10 new classrooms, and that school can accommodate its own full-day kindergarten students, along with children from Newman and Ponderosa.