Daniels presents funding options for full-day kindergarten in Indiana

LAFAYETTE -- Gov. Mitch Daniels presented cost estimates Wednesday for three ways that full-day kindergarten could be implemented, including one that would make it available statewide for the 2007-08 school year and two others that would phase it in over five years.\nDaniels' Office of Management and Budget estimated that making full-day kindergarten available statewide for the first year would cost about $166 million.\nThat's higher than a previous estimate of $140 million by the Legislative Services Agency, which the administration said was outdated.\nBecause of factors such as the state's school funding formula and anticipated enrollment growth, the administration projected the cost in the next school year to be $210 million.\nDaniels is making full-day kindergarten a top priority in the legislative session that begins in January, when lawmakers begin writing a new two-year budget that includes a formula that determines how money is doled out to schools.\nHe briefly discussed the funding options before a meeting of Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors, a group composed of editors at AP-served newspapers across the state. They were also presented to the Education Roundtable, an advisory group on school policy.\n"While other options remain open, these three scenarios represent the approaches most frequently proposed to us by educators with whom we have been visiting," he said in a memo to roundtable members.\nHe told editors that if lawmakers continue to be tight with money in the next two-year budget, "public education can get a boost in this state, particularly in full-day kindergarten."\n"I think we are going to be in a position to do it," Daniels, a Republican, said.\nThe three approaches were based on the school funding formula in the current two-year budget that expires in June 2007.\nIf Indiana were to launch the full statewide plan in the 2007-08 school year, one option is to pay the first five months of expenses from August to December — an estimated $76 million — through state grants. The other $89 million for the rest of the year would come from a new formula that would kick in during January.\nAll of the plans rely on a mix of state dollars and local property tax money, with the state picking up most of the cost for the operational side, such as additional teachers. But some schools are concerned that they would need more classroom space — capital costs that fall on local property taxpayers.\nThe phase-in options would depend in part on the number or percentage of students who receive free or reduced-price lunches in each district.\nOne would pay for all students on that program the first year, and other children would be phased in over each of the next four years.\nThe other funding option would phase full-day kindergarten first to districts with 50 percent or more of their students on the lunch program, then for schools with 40 percent or more the next year, then 30 percent, and so on.\nAlthough the state has ended several years of deficit spending, projections indicate Indiana will finish this budget cycle in July 2007 with only about $160 million in its main checking account. If revenue grows at a traditional rate of 4 percent in each of the next two years, it would bring in about $500 million in new money per year, according to budget officials.\nBut some of that money is already in the pipeline to be spent, and Daniels wants to pay off $330 million in back payments owed to universities and local governments in the next budget. And numerous proposals for spending elsewhere have surfaced among lawmakers and lobbyists, including money for other education priorities.\nSuellen Reed, the state's superintendent of public instruction, noted that there will be demands for basic funding increases for all grades, technology improvements in schools and reading grants.\nShe would prefer to pay for full-day kindergarten statewide in the first year, but said, "What happens is up to the wisdom of the General Assembly"