MUKILTEO — It may sound odd that a school district is turning down approximately $2.5 million in state money, but that’s what the Mukilteo School District is doing.
The state has offered an additional $166 million to school districts statewide to expand kindergarten classes from a half day to a full day.
Mukilteo turned down the money because it doesn’t have enough classroom space to allow its kindergarten students to attend classes all day, said Andy Muntz, a school district spokesman. “We have no where to put them.”
If school districts accept the money for full-day kindergarten, “you have to give it to all kids,” he said. “We don’t have any schools that have enough classrooms to do that.”
During the last school year, the Mukilteo School district had a kindergarten enrollment of 1,058 students. When school districts go from half-day to full-day kindergarten, “You need twice as many classrooms for that program,” he said.
Mukilteo is one of six schools districts statewide that turned down funding for the upcoming school year for all-day kindergarten because they don’t have enough classroom space. The others are Battle Ground, Blaine, Central Valley near Spokane, Mead and Pullman.
“We know the problem,” Muntz said. “We’re working to solve it.”
Mukilteo School District voters approved a $119 million bond issue in 2014 with money set aside in part to build enough new classrooms to accommodate all-day kindergarten.
Some of those classrooms will be housed at the new $23.4 million Lake Stickney Elementary School, scheduled to open in the fall of 2016.
The rest of the space for all-day kindergarten classes will be housed at a new $33.5 million early learning center near Paine Field, scheduled to open in the fall of 2017, Muntz said.
This isn’t the first time the school district has turned down money for all-day kindergarten. The district also declined money in 2013 and 2014 for the same reasons.
“It takes time to build the buildings,” Muntz said. “They just don’t appear overnight. We’re in that period where the decision has been made, the money is there, we will have them, it’s just not yet. We just have to wait for the buildings to be built.”
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486; salyer@heraldnet.com.
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