Kindergarten takes another hit in proposed budget

BY STACI WILSON

School administrators will be pouring over district budgets during the next few months in an attempt to figure out how they can continue to offer full-day kindergarten and pre-kindergarten in their districts.

Gov. Tom Corbett released his proposed state budget last week providing for near flat-funding of basic education and the elimination of the Accountability Block Grant program.

Montrose Area School District Superintendent Michael Ognosky said, “Losing the Accountability Bock Grant funding could potentially have a huge impact on our district. We currently utilize that funding to help support our full day Kindergarten initiative that has been so successful.”

According to the state’s Department of Education website, the grant program, began in 2004-5 and made funds available to school districts for programs that had been proven to improve the educational achievement of students, such as full-day kindergarten and pre-kindergarten programs.

In 2011-12, Montrose Area received $136,177 in Accountability Block Grant money for its kindergarten program. There are seven kindergarten classrooms in the district – four at Lathrop Street Elementary and three at Choconut Valley Elementary.

And that potential loss of funding will have the district scrambling to find the money elsewhere in the district coffers.

“Whether we can find areas in the budget to “make up” that money will be part of our two month budget analysis process,” Ognosky said. “Only time will tell.”

As a result of the 2011 cuts in the Accountability Block Grant funding, Susquehanna Community Schools converted its K-4 program from a full day to a half-day program in the 2011-12 school term.

Superintendent Bronson Stone said the proposed elimination of the grant “essentially put a definitive end to any expansion of early childhood education in the Commonwealth.”

Stone said the district lost $472,000 last year with the governor’s budget cuts and with this year’s proposed cuts and mandated district increases in the retirement contribution rate, there are more expenditures for the school than revenue.

Stone said, “The district is going to have to take a conservative approach to budgeting and evaluate the effectiveness of every optional program we have.”

He plans to begin discussing the governor’s proposed with the school board at its Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 14-15, meetings.

The superintendent said it is frustrating to watch all of the progress made in public education be put on hold because of the governor’s decisions.

But he stands committed to offering quality education to the students.

“Parents in the Commonwealth should be outraged that the governor is intent on destroying the quality of education that school districts offer,” Stone said.

For the upcoming school year Stone said Susquehanna Community would need to dip into the district fund balance.

But, he said, using the fund balance only provides for a “band-aid” fix for the looming PSERS crisis. .

Rural school districts do a better hob with less funding,” Stone said. “But with every opportunity to take away from the less affluent school districts those opportunities are taken by the governor and state legislature.”