NH extends kindergarten deadline
CONCORD, N.H. --Twelve New Hampshire towns will get another year to start kindergarten programs.
Gov. John Lynch signed a law Friday that extends the deadline and provides extra financial help to the towns.
The Legislature included public kindergarten as a requirement for all schools in the definition of an adequate education adopted last year. That law gave communities without kindergarten until September 2008 to offer programs. They now have an extra year.
The towns are Hudson, Litchfield, Lyndeborough, Mascenic, Mason, Milford, Pelham, Auburn, Chester, Derry, Salem and Windham.
The state is giving the towns multiple options to get programs started.
The towns can contract with private kindergarten providers for three years. They also can get state help leasing portable classrooms for up to four years.
The towns also have a choice of school building aid programs to add kindergarten classrooms. The state will pay 75 percent of the cost of a custom designed building. Or, the state will pay 100 percent of the cost for a basic design approved by the state.
The provision to pay 100 percent was included after critics questioned the constitutionality of the state imposing a mandate on the towns without funding it. The state will not pay to buy land for classrooms.
The state also will pay to furnish the classrooms.
The towns also will start getting school aid for the kindergarten pupils.
School districts not starting programs this fall must submit a plan to the state by December on how they will implement programs for the 2009-2010 school year.
The state estimates it will cost $20 million to help the towns start programs.
The new law also suspends a law that requires property rich towns to pay excess state property taxes for redistribution to poorer towns. The suspension would last through Fiscal 2011. The provision was left out of the new school financing law enacted this year.
The financing law keeps aid levels essentially the same until two new commissions can study whether more changes in school funding are needed.
No towns would get less aid in 2010 and 2011 than they get next year. Those expecting windfalls under the new system would see their increases capped at 15 percent during the two-year transition. 