Kindergarten fees raise legal questions in several states
Oregon lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow school districts to continue charging fees for full-day kindergarten—in light of the state attorney general’s recent ruling that said districts don’t have authority under state law to collect the tuition. In December, Attorney General Hardy Myers issued an advisory on the matter after a couple in the 6,600-student Corvallis school district argued that they could not afford the $290 a month required to pay for a full-day program. The district—among several with such charges—ended up refunding fees paid by low-income parents. But many school lawyers in the state contend that since the state only funds the half-day programs required under state law, districts are justified in continuing the long-standing practice of charging fees for the remainder of the school day. “This is the only area within public education where you are allowed to charge tuition,” said Michael Griffith, a school finance expert at the Denver-based Education Commission of the States (ECS). According to the ECS, 43 states require that districts offer at least a half-day program.
The issue has come up in other states as well. In Ohio last fall, Attorney General Marc Dann was drawn into the debate after parents objected to the fees in that state. While Ohio pays for full-day kindergarten in low-wealth districts, districts that don’t qualify for that aid have either been covering the cost themselves or charging fees to parents. A bill passed in the legislature in December allows districts that don’t receive what is known as “property-based assistance funding” to continue charging parents as long as they use a sliding-fee scale. In Massachusetts, where the state provides some grant money to districts as an incentive to offer full-day kindergarten, parents have been more annoyed over the range of fees charged across the state, said Ophelia Navarro, a research and policy analyst for Strategies for Children, an advocacy organization based in Boston. In Indiana, the state supreme court ruled in 2006 that public schools could not assess charges on any program that wasn’t extracurricular. The ruling was interpreted to include full-day kindergarten, but Jeff Zharing, the chief of staff and the administrator for the Indiana board of education, said the court didn’t “fully define” what it meant by tuition. Legislation eventually passed in the 2007 session that allows districts to continue collecting fees for the full-day program, a practice that could be challenged again in the future, Mr. Zharing said.
Source: Education Week, 2/12/08, By Linda Jacobson
[Editor’s Note: According to David Williams, Legislative and Public Affairs Specialist for the Oregon School Boards Association, the legislation is likely to pass the state Senate this week and is not expected to encounter difficulty in the House. The Oregon attorney general’s opinion, below, was advisory and concluded that full-day kindergarten is part of the “regular school program” under Oregon statutes. It went on to conclude that a school cannot charge tuition (1) if it extends a half-day program to a full day to give more time and attention to the regular planned activities; (2) just by claiming that the full-day program is voluntary and thus not part of the regular school program; or (3) by designating the afternoon program something other than kindergarten, such as “enrichment activities,” if the program nonetheless has the features of kindergarten set forth in state statutes. Background on the legal question in Ohio and Indiana, with additional policy information on full-day kindergarten, is at the NSBA link. As the full Education Week article highlights, ECS has an online database of state legal authority on kindergarten, at the last link.]
Oregon attorney general’s opinion
NSBA School Law pages on kindergarten tuition questions
ECS Online Interactive Kindergarten Database