Mustang School District will likely fall short of offering full-day kindergarten to students by Oklahoma's deadline this fall.
Superintendent Bonnie Lightfoot said Mustang isn't in a strong enough financial position to add programs that will require hiring more teachers and staff. When funding is available, Lightfoot said full-day kindergarten is a top priority.
“I am almost positively confident it (full-day kindergarten) can't happen this fall,” she said.
A state law enacted more than six years ago requires school districts to offer a six-hour kindergarten program by August 2011.
Some educators have also argued the state has never fully funded the move to full-day kindergarten. Oklahoma weighs each kindergartner in a half-day program as 1.3 students. A full-day kindergartner is weighted in the formula as 1.5 students.
The law was passed with one caveat exempting school districts at 85 percent of their bonding capacity. Mustang is one of those districts.
Mustang school officials have called full-day kindergarten a priority for years. They promised their community to start a full-day kindergarten program by 2008, but that was later pushed back to August 2010. Reluctantly last March, school board members voted to again delay the program further as they faced a historic budget crisis.
Lightfoot said Mustang will move to offer full-day kindergarten as soon as the district can afford it.
“That is one of the things we are dedicated to do,” she said.
Mustang school officials have studied how to implement full-day kindergarten since 2006.
First, officials found Mustang would need to expand schools to fit in another 18 kindergarten classrooms. Voters approved expansions for 26 additional classrooms, adding 10 classrooms at the newly constructed Mustang Centennial Elementary, and more space at Mustang Creek, Mustang Trails and Mustang Valley schools.
Lightfoot said those classrooms are now open and being used to house reading and math lab classes, English Language Learners programs and other offerings that formerly shared space. Once the district moves to full-day kindergarten, she said those classes will be freed up as programs share space or move back into portable buildings.
Second, officials found Mustang would need to hire at least 18 more early childhood educators to expand to a full-day program, as well as buying more materials and fitting kindergartners onto school buses and into cafeterias.
By last spring, Mustang had saved $1.2 million to implement full-day kindergarten, but Mustang faced historic budget cuts as the recession ate into state tax revenue. School board members approved using the kindergarten savings account to get through the last fiscal year and get started on this school year.
Even if the district didn't need the funds to get through, Lightfoot had said it would be irresponsible to start a program and hire teachers when officials knew they couldn't sustain it. As the district put off full-day kindergarten, Lightfoot said they needed to shrink the faculty by 20 positions.
In the end, she said Mustang wasn't able to decrease its faculty this fall because its student body increased by 200 children, bringing the district to 8,845 youth. However, early childhood class sizes increased to between 20 to 22 children, and third- through fifth-grade classes have grown to an average of 26 children.
“We have just about reached our limit to what we can cut,” Lightfoot said.