Full-time kindergarten no longer free

By Sean Feagan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Full-time kindergarten is no longer free at schools in the Golden Hill School Division and Christ the Redeemer Catholic School Board.

In Alberta, the province funds a half-day kindergarten program for students. However, the Golden Hills School Division (GHSD) has offered a full-day program without charging parents since the 2012-13 school year.

Due to financial constraints, that is slated to change, explained GHSD Superintendent Bevan Daverne.

“As budgets have become tighter, and certainly next year is looking like a tighter budget, our board has made the decision that we’re still going to offer full-time kindergarten, but we’re going to have to charge a fee to make it viable,” he said.

Christ the Redeemer has also made the change to a paid full-time kindergarten program, said Superintendent Scott Morrison.

“In a challenging budgeting year, you have to look at all programming that’s not funded, and you have to ask if you can afford it,” he said. “You get fully funded for half-day kindergarten, but the other half, the division is paying for it.

“So, we have to redirect money from other areas to that, and we just didn’t have the money there to do that anymore.”

The fee will not cover the entire cost of the program, but will cover more of it, added Morrison.

Enrollment in the full-time kindergarten program within either school board will cost parents $1,250 per school year, which they have the option to pay as $125 monthly payments during the 10 months when school is in session.

There is no fee for the regular half-time kindergarten program. GHSD runs these classes two days per week (Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays) and alternating Fridays, explained Daverne. This method is used by the division over morning and afternoon programs because many students are bused into schools, he said.

Changes to provincial education funding has made offering the program without a fee no longer viable, said Laurie Huntley, chair of the GHSD board of trustees.

“The new funding model in some ways has played out to our advantage in different areas, but our actual instructional dollars are less,” she said. “Those are the dollars that really hit home in the classroom.”

Installing the fee will help the school recover some, but not all, of the cost of providing the full-day program, she said. The cost will “still be quite a bit less if parents had to pay for daycare,” she added.

“We were reluctant to have to do that, but we just didn’t have any other choice,” said Huntley. “It’s a tough decision – we’re having to make quite a few tough decisions.”