A full-day pre-K program could cost $2.5 million for 162 children, and a half-day version, for 324 children, close to $3 million, school officials told the Poughkeepsie Journal.
Finances aside, there is an issue of fairness. There simply isn’t enough room to accommodate all 700 children who would be eligible for pre-K and the district would have to hold a lottery, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported.
The district would also be battling bureaucracy. Wappingers would have to go it alone because it didn’t apply for universal pre-K funding from the state in 2006 and this means that if it established its own program, it would not be eligible for funding when, and if, the state re-opens the application process, according to the the Poughkeepsie Journal report.
Education advocates have been pushing the state to fund more upstate pre-K programs.
Outside New York City, 20,000 children have access to full-day pre-K programs; 70,000 children are in those program in the city, the Poughkeepsie Journal said, citing a report from the Alliance for Quality Education.
Wappingers does have a full-day kindergarten program which it has been footing the bill for itself after a state grant ran out, the Poughkeepsie Journal story said.
To read the the Poughkeepsie Journal report click here.
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