Fairfax County public schools took a small step forward Thursday in its expansion of full-day kindergarten, but remains lagging some surrounding districts that have made the program universal.
The slow creep toward adding the program to all of Fairfax‘s elementary schools stands in contrast with the system’s image as the educational standard-setter in the Washington area. Arlington and Alexandria have established full-day kindergarten, which Maryland school districts were mandated to implement last year.
The Fairfax County School Board pumped $1.5 million into “full day-K” as part of the austere $2.2 billion fiscal 2009 budget passed Thursday evening, adding it to five elementary schools. It was one of the few program expansions to survive the budget ax during tight financial times, but represents one of the smallest spending increases for the initiative in recent years.
“This isn’t that we’re leading the pack, we’re a laggard in providing full-day kindergarten to our students,” said School Board Chairman Dan Storck, who said the move brings full-day kindergarten to roughly two-thirds of the school system.
After more than 30 meetings with parents in the community, he said the kindergarten expansion emerged as the largest demand, considered especially important to economically disadvantaged and children learning English.
“We’re going to find a way to squeeze out at least a few more classes to show people that we know what the priority is in our community,” Storck said.
The roadblocks facing taxpayer-funded early childhood education have been felt statewide. Gov. Tim Kaine saw his expansion of pre-kindergarten for low-income children pared down to just $22 million during state budget talks this year, a fraction of what he had proposed.
The outlook for moving Fairfax County’s full-day kindergarten forward next year is poor. The county’s financial struggles are expected to intensify in fiscal 2010, when the county will face a projected $350 million budget shortfall caused largely by the deteriorating housing market.
