Oregon Public Broadcasting

Two years after the Corvallis school district’s kindergarten program triggered a lawsuit threat and a change in state law, board members voted this week to drop the program at the schools where parents had to pay to participate. Rob Manning has more.

Oregon only pays school districts for a half-day of kindergarten, so districts for years have charged parents whose kids stay a full day.

But a threatened lawsuit against Corvallis led to a change in Oregon law that allowed public schools to charge for what’s called “enrichment” but not “education.”

So, Corvallis continued charging tuition at schools that didn’t receive federal poverty funds. But school board vice-chair, Lisa Corrigan, says board members voted this week to stop charging tuition altogether because too few parents could afford it, and the program was in the red.

Lisa Corrigan: “So the question that came to the school board was ‘should we continue to supplant this with general fund money, or are there other more pressing needs in the district?’.”

Corrigan says the district is already talking to area non-profits about having them provide an afternoon enrichment program for kindergarteners at a lower cost.