School district scrambling over 'full day K': Promised new money from province to pay for full day Kindergarten has not appeared
The Citizen
By Lexi Bainas
March 26, 2010

Cowichan Valley school trustees now have an additional hurdle as they make their way through the minefield of preparing their $70 million budget for 2010/11.

A provincial push towards all-day Kindergarten, enthusiastically supported by this district, may have to go forward without the promised funding, the district's finance committee learned at a session Wednesday, March 24.

It means a tough job is now even tougher and district Secretary-Treasurer Bob Harper and his assistant, Jason Sandquist, were headed to Victoria to meet with Education Ministry officials Thursday to discuss what options are now open to districts.

According to Linda McMenamin, the district's director of elementary education and the official whose been shepherding the project towards startup, the problem is that the program was announced provincially but once the provincial budget came down and school districts learned how much money they were actually getting, it became clear that the promised funding for this new program had not materialized.

"When the board approved full-day Kindergarten we thought that the funding for full day K would come as additional funding, separate from the operating budget," she said.

Now, district officials, the Board of Education and the rest of the partner groups that make up the finance committee, must attempt to fit at least 235 already-registered full-day Kindergarten students into a framework that does not account for them.

Cowichan Valley isn't the only district scrambling.

"The whole province is dealing with the same thing," McMenamin said.

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