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Wide disparity in kindergarten tuition:
Schools charge from $0 to $3,600 for full-day program
Salem News, March 6, 2007

The Beverly public schools are charging $3,600 for children to attend full-day kindergarten classes while many of their neighboring districts charge nothing.

The tuition in Beverly is the third highest in the state among school districts that also receive state grants to help pay for kindergarten, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education.

Beverly raised its tuition to $3,600 from $3,000 this school year and plans to keep the same rate for next year. Only North Andover and North Reading, who charge the $4,000 state maximum, are more expensive in Massachusetts.

The wide disparity in how school districts run their kindergarten programs came to light last week after Gov. Deval Patrick proposed spending $39.5 million - a 46 percent increase - to expand 800 half-day classrooms to full-day.

State law requires that school districts only provide half-day kindergarten classes and allows them to charge tuition if they decide to hold full-day classes. But many school districts, including six on the North Shore, offer full-day kindergarten classes for free.

Salem has had free full-day kindergarten for 15 years, and Peabody has offered it free for six years. Danvers, Hamilton-Wenham, Ipswich and Manchester-Essex also have free full-day classes.

Boxford charges $2,800 and Topsfield will do the same next year, but those districts don't receive state grants that help pay for kindergarten. The only other North Shore community that charges tuition while also receiving a state grant is Marblehead, and the tuition there is only $410.

Beverly Assistant Superintendent Marie Galinski said Beverly has to charge so much because it doesn't receive as much federal and state assistance as poorer school districts.

When asked why more affluent districts like Hamilton-Wenham and Manchester also provide free full-day kindergarten, Galinski said, "It's a School Committee decision. They're the ones who determine who is going to run a full-day program."

There is such a wide discrepancy in what's available because state law leaves it up to local communities to decide whether to offer full-day kindergarten and how much to charge.

Some schools offer no full-day classes at all, while others have a mix of full- and half-day programs. Some districts, including Beverly and Danvers, hold lotteries to determine which students get into the limited number of full-day classes.

According to the state Department of Education, 61 percent of children now attend full-day kindergarten.

"Kids in families are penalized by geography in Massachusetts," said Coleman Nee of Early Education for All, a nonprofit group that advocates free full-day kindergarten classes. "That's an unfortunate situation."

Beverly is one of only 53 districts in the state charging tuition for full-day kindergarten, and one of only 29 who charge tuition while also receiving state kindergarten grants, according to the state Department of Education. The average tuition is $2,400.

Beverly brings in about $400,000 per year from the kindergarten tuition, according to Galinski. It also receives about $120,000 from the state's kindergarten grant program.

But Galinski said the tuition and grant money is not enough to cover the cost of the district's 10 full-day classes, which she said can cost as much as $100,000 per class to run.

The state requires districts to offer reduced or free tuition to families based on income. Galinski estimated that 60 percent of families in Beverly pay the full $3,600 tuition.

Salem has had free full-day kindergarten classes for at least 15 years, Salem Assistant Superintendent Alyce Davis said. The school districts get a $368,000 grant from the state to help pay for the program.

Davis said the advantages of the full-day classes are clear. The students not only get more instruction in reading and math, but in areas such as science, technology, art, music and physical education, she said.

"Those are all very much part of the day (in a full-day program)," Davis said. "It seems like we should take advantage of that and provide as full an experience as we can as soon as we can."

About 450 children are in full-day kindergarten in Salem, Davis said. Parents have the option to send their children for only a half-day, "but my experience has been that within a few weeks the child wants to go full day," Davis said.

Deb Murphy, the coordinator of Peabody's tuition-free kindergarten program, said teachers do not have enough time in the three-hour half-day classes to teach what the state requires.

"Because of all the mandates from the Department of Education, kindergarten is required to be much more academic than it ever was," Murphy said. "To do it in a half-day is asking teachers to do an impossible task."

Patrick has proposed a $12.5 million increase in the grant program that helps school districts convert half-day kindergarten classrooms into full-day. But Galinski said money is not the only obstacle for Beverly. The district does not have enough room to run full-day classes for all of its 300 kindergarten students, she said.

Even though Galinski said "there's no question that every child can benefit from a full-day program," she said. Beverly has no immediate plan to adopt universal, free full-day kindergarten.

"We would have to do some reallocation of students, and I don't think that's in the near future," she said. "As long as it's not a mandate, we're going to have to ease ourselves into it over a long period of time."

Kindergarten programs
School district Full-day? Tuition State grant

Beverly Yes $3,600 $119,750

Boxford Yes $2,800 $0

Danvers Yes $0 $0

Hamilton-Wenham Yes $0 $0

Ipswich Yes $0 $74,875

Manchester-Essex Yes $0 $29,950

Marblehead Yes $410 $179,700

Middleton No NA $0

Peabody Yes $0 $344,425

Salem Yes $0 $368,225

Swampscott No NA $0

*Topsfield Yes $2,800 $0

* Starting next school year

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