Full-day, year-round kindergarten proposed

The Carson City School District could start its first year-round, full-day kindergarten pilot program next year at Bordewich-Bray Elementary School.

The school board will vote on the program Tuesday as part of its final budget for next fiscal year. District Fiscal Director Bob Anderson proposed the program Wednesday night at the board's last budget hearing.

The self-supporting program would run weekdays 246 days a year. The students picked by application for the program would pay $65 a week in tuition.

The program is expected to raise about $136,400 a year for the $123,800 program. The excess money would be used for classroom materials.

Staff would include one teacher and two teaching aids.

The district would have to reach a bargaining agreement with teachers for the program if the school board approved the idea in its final budget.

"It's really outside the box," Anderson said. "We need to take our time and make sure we have everything in place."

The program could expand to 25 classes in 2011 if the pilot program goes well, Anderson said. Superintendent Richard Stokes convinced him that starting with 25 classes this August was too much too soon, he said.

Most kindergarten classes in the district are half-day. A few kindergarten classes at Empire Elementary School are full-day, but not year-round. Fremont Elementary School kindergarten classes are year-round, but half-day.

Stokes said this will help parents who work during the day and have to find day care for the students who get out of school early.

"We're taking into account a need in the community and capitalizing on it," he said. "We're seeing if we can use more of a business model in education."

School board members said this was the first they had heard of the idea, but they did not say they were opposed to it. It will be included in the final budget because the board did not oppose it.

The only spending the board voted to add to the final budget was $10,000 for five special education teachers who would receive $2,000 hiring bonuses apiece. The Nevada Legislature eliminated funding for hiring bonuses.

The district had to close a $7.2 million shortfall in its $53 million general fund budget. Teachers and parents rejected initial proposals to close an elementary school or change school's calendar in favor of eliminating 43 open job positions.