Jennifer Nitson, December 23, 2007
Corvallis' full-day kindergarten classes will not be disrupted by an opinion released earlier this week by the state Attorney General's office that charging tuition for kindergarten is illegal.
Many school districts in Oregon, including Corvallis, supplement the half-day of kindergarten funded by the state with a few extra hours of school - and charge tuition.
Because of parental demand for such a program, the Corvallis School District has offered full-day kindergarten for more than a decade. The extra half-day costs the district about $260,000 in teachers' salaries and benefits alone. The district covers much of this cost by charging families $60 or $295 a month tuition, depending on the number of days for which they sign up.
A Corvallis family called this practice into question last spring, and subsequently both the state Legislature's legal counsel and the Attorney General's office have said the tuition is illegal. These opinions are not legally binding ...
House Representative Sara Gelser of Corvallis said that she would support legislation giving school districts the authority to charge tuition through the rest of the school-year, as well as shield districts from potential lawsuits or having to make refunds for tuition charged in previous years.
"Right now if the legislature were to say they can't charge tuition for full-day kindergarten it would create chaos across the state," Gelser said. If districts cannot charge the tuition, she added that the legislature should allocate funds to the all-day programs.