Press Release From School Board to Stress Its Support of All-Day Kindergarten

The Barrington School Committee really does support all-day kindergarten and recognizes its importance as the Common Core curriculum is adopted. 

At least that’s what a press release to be sent out in about two weeks will try to drive home to Barrington parents. It hopes those words will trump any of the actions taken by the School Committee in the past few months.

The School Committee spent a significant amount of its 90-minute meeting Wednesday night, Aug. 7, trying to get some consensus on the message to be sent out and the wording of that message about all-day kindergarten.

“We still think there are misperceptions out there about our support and the superintendent’s support of all-day kindergarten in Barrington,” said Robert Shea Jr., chairman of the school board.

The misperception dates back to the Financial Town Meeting in mid-May, Shea said, when many voters questioned why the School Committee had not made all-day kindergarten a higher priority for this fall instead of allowing it to come to a vote on the floor for supplemental funding.

Voters rejected an amendment to the town budget seeking $633,000 in additional funding for all-day kindergarten. A couple of weeks later, the School Committee voted unanimously to ask Superintendent Michael Messore to look at the financial feasibility of starting all-day kindergarten mid-year at the earliest instead of this fall.

Both Shea and Messore said then that there simply were not sufficient funds in the $45.6 million school budget to start all-day kindergarten this year without cutting or slashing other programs. 

That further spread the perception that other programs seem more important than all-day kindergarten even as the administration begins implementing the new Common Core standards for the curriculum, which stresses the need for all-day kindergarten.

Several parents at Wednesday’s meeting pointedly asked the School Committee to keep all-day kindergarten on its agenda.

That will be a top priority for the superintendent, Shea said. The goal remains to add all-day kindergarten as soon as possible – and the press release being drafted will emphasize that all-day K is a priority for the administration.