SAUGUS — Saugus’s school committee added a meeting to its calendar Thursday to allow the board and superintendent more time to discuss the district’s 2021 budget.
At the top of the committee’s priority list: free, full-day kindergarten for Saugus families.
Board member Arthur Grabowski was in full support of the idea, saying he felt a statewide mandate for free kindergarten tuition was an inevitability the district would soon face.
“I think we’ve come to the point where there are only 50-some odd school districts in the whole state of Massachusetts that still charge (for full-day kindergarten),” he said, adding later: “I think we need to get on board ahead of time … Put money back in the pockets of parents.”
Currently, Saugus parents seeking to enroll their children in full-time kindergarten must pay an enrollment fee of $2,700. Forcing families to pay such a hefty sum is a practice board member Ryan Fisher said actively works against the district, which frequently loses eligible students to nearby private schools.
“As a parent, if there’s a barrier to entry, I’m less likely to put my kids into school here,” he said, saying once a child is comfortably integrated into a school environment, parents might be more hesitant to enroll that child elsewhere.
A potential issue the board noted is the district’s current first-come, first-served 18-student cap on kindergarten enrollment, which might prove to be too small if the district were to make full-day enrollment free.
Saugus School Superintendent David DeRuosi told the board the power to decrease or increase the cap rested entirely in the board’s hands, but added that coming up with a cost estimate for free kindergarten would be difficult.
“My first year here, we came up with a ballpark price, but some of the unknowns we’re facing is that we’re never quite sure of what that population is in the district,” he said. “We told the previous committee that if we decide to go all-day, we may guess 50 kids but end up with 100, which then creates a bigger problem for the district, because you’re going to need more teachers, more classrooms.”
Despite the uncertainty, the board unanimously agreed it wanted to include free full-day kindergarten when it comes time to draft the district’s 2021 budget, with Grabowski noting that children who have access to full-day kindergarten tend to have an advantage over peers who don’t later on in their educational careers.
“It’s important, for equity purposes, that every child in this town has access to all-day kindergarten,” Grabowski said. “It’s sad when parents cannot pay to send their child to all-day kindergarten when it should be as much a right to a child’s education (as other grades).”
