Parents cope with kindergarten cuts

For Marta Palacios, the change from a full-day kindergarten program to half-day sessions in the Elwood school district meant changing her work schedule to accommodate her son Bryon's schedule.

"Last year he was in school only half a day," Palacios said Wednesday as she and her husband, Ricardo, picked up Bryon from his first day at Harley Avenue Primary School. "We thought he was finally going to be in school all day, but now it's not working out."

She said she has changed her hours at her job in a pet store. Ricardo Palacios said they might need to hire a baby-sitter to cover gaps in child care.

"We'll adjust," he said. "What are you going to do? You can't change it."

In May, district voters approved the 2011-12 budget with the reduction in the kindergarten program.

Officials said in a statement on the district website they were "disappointed" to lose the full-day program and that the decision was a difficult one "made under the financial circumstances that exist."

Cuts in state aid and continued unfunded state mandates have been cited by school districts across Long Island as culprits in reducing and eliminating programs.

Elwood Superintendent Peter C. Scordo did not return requests for comment Wednesday.

As Tabitha Davidson waited to pick up her daughter from her first day at Harley Avenue, she said she and her husband are able to rearrange their work schedules around the school calendar.

"My concern is the educational time," Davidson said. "They get that much less time with the teacher, there's no recess, I don't think there's art, it's not the full experience. They raised taxes and lowered services."

Jack Schwartz, a five-year district resident who has a child in first grade and a 3-year-old, advocated in the spring for saving full-day kindergarten. He said he worries that the children will pay the price.

"At the last few meetings, they talked about how the test scores in the third, fourth and fifth grades were not what they were hoping for," said Schwartz, who ran unsuccessfully for the school board in the spring.

"It all starts in kindergarten," he said. "If you don't give them that initial love and base for learning, you're catching them at third, fourth, fifth grade and you're already missing the boat."