Fairfax for Full Day Kindergarten Group - 2/1 email update

[Dunfarall]

All Day Kindergarten will actually cost approximately $6.5 million or $7 million to be implemented in all 37 schools! Nothing near $24 million and the $7 million is not a ton of money in a 2.2 billion dollar budget. A budget amendment passed at the state level allowing unused preschool funding to be used for kindergarten which will add at least $0.5-$1 million, plus FCPS will not have to bus half day children which costs approximately $400,000. This reduces the amount 1 to 1.5 million from $8 million down to $6.5 to $7 million. With the current budget at $2.2 billion dollars, I don't believe it is fair to implement full day kindergarten for only some of the 37 schools left. There is not much difference economically between the rest of the schools to justify this cherry picking. The only fair thing to do is to implement them all or leave the setup as it is today. The teachers and principals have all gotten onboard to say how difficult a half day curriculum is for the teachers and the students. If FCPS rolls this out for say 21 schools and then 16 schools are left out of 137 schools in Fairfax County I think this is creating an even more unfair situation. Why should those schools be left with a poor environment for their teachers and children while 121 schools have full day. Same thing with raises. Why should teachers get 4% raises while other Fairfax County workers don't get raises? The budget calls for $80 million just in teacher raises. This issue is about equality and implementing full day kindergarten for only some of the 37 schools will not make things equal.

[tgbwc]

Originally Posted by Dunfarall

All Day Kindergarten will actually cost approximately $6.5 million or $7 million to be implemented in all 37 schools! Nothing near $24 million and the $7 million is not a ton of money in a 2.2 billion dollar budget. A budget amendment passed at the state level allowing unused preschool funding to be used for kindergarten which will add at least $0.5-$1 million, plus FCPS will not have to bus half day children which costs approximately $400,000. This reduces the amount 1 to 1.5 million from $8 million down to $6.5 to $7 million. With the current budget at $2.2 billion dollars, I don't believe it is fair to implement full day kindergarten for only some of the 37 schools left. There is not much difference economically between the rest of the schools to justify this cherry picking. The only fair thing to do is to implement them all or leave the setup as it is today. The teachers and principals have all gotten onboard to say how difficult a half day curriculum is for the teachers and the students. If FCPS rolls this out for say 21 schools and then 16 schools are left out of 137 schools in Fairfax County I think this is creating an even more unfair situation. Why should those schools be left with a poor environment for their teachers and children while 121 schools have full day. Same thing with raises. Why should teachers get 4% raises while other Fairfax County workers don't get raises? The budget calls for $80 million just in teacher raises. This issue is about equality and implementing full day kindergarten for only some of the 37 schools will not make things equal.

I agree that it is preferable to have full day over 1/2 day kindergarten. Our kindergarten teachers try to get in the same curriculum in during 1/2 the time. They still might have to phase it in though.

Regarding the raises, the proposal is for a 2% market scale adjustment, not 4%. Did you have the same opinion years ago (approx. 2000-2002 if I remember correctly) when county workers were receiving 2x the % in raises that school employees were getting?

[Dunfarall]

The proposal is for a 2% COLA adjustment as well as a 2% step increase.

[tgbwc]

Originally Posted by Dunfarall

The proposal is for a 2% COLA adjustment as well as a 2% step increase.

That's correct.