Full-day kindergarten is optional. Districts don’t have to adopt it (yet). Keno to pay for full-day kindergarten is also optional. Towns don’t have to embrace it (yet). As Tom notes here Keno has failed to deliver adequate funding for full-day kindergarten. But Democrats knew that (Republicans fell for it) and now the Left is trying to change the game.
Related: Could Full Day Kindergarten in New Hampshire Cure Athlete’s Foot?
Sen. David ‘Rising’ Watters has proposed SB266. This bill would divert Keno revenue to the building aid program and fund full-day kindergarten with 14.8 million from the education trust fund.
Watters said SB 266 would use Keno to eliminate a key reason why building aid was halted a decade ago — the lack of a consistent funding source. He said it would simultaneously increase the quality of kindergarten education and get New Hampshire out of the practice of using gambling to pay for it.
Raiding a state fund means that paying for full-day kindergarten is no longer optional whether you opted in or not. Using an unreliable source of funding like gambling to pay for building aid – once reinstated- will only lead to finding a more stable source.
Democrat’s are pushing for an income tax to help fix our “broken education funding system.”
If you are already paying for it you might as well have it.
Anyone who thinks that wasn’t the plan all along is a rube.
