By DONNA KENNY KIRWAN

PAWTUCKET — Bowing to the city’s fiscal crisis, the School Committee Tuesday night voted to abandon the idea of a district-wide, all-day kindergarten program for now and remove the line item from the upcoming year’s budget.

While the benefits of all-day kindergarten are evidenced to be many, including improving children’s early learning habits and boosting test scores, School Committee members reluctantly acknowledged that the time is not right given the current economy and budgetary concerns. The cost to implement the program in all of the city’s elementary schools was estimated to be about $612,000.
School Committeewoman Nicole Nordquist, who championed the plan, said, “There are many things I have supported, but the thing I was most proud of, and thought most important, was the implementation of all-day kindergarten.”
While popular with many parents of youngsters, the plan had come under attack from city officials and fiscal conservatives, who criticized school officials for being unrealistic in their budgetary requests. 
However, Nordquist defended the plan and the school budget itself, saying that the school side had done a good job to contain its costs and be fiscally responsible. She blamed the cutbacks in state aid as being the primary reason for the current school deficit, and thus, “with regret and sadness” made the motion to remove the line item request.
Her feelings were echoed by several other committee members, who also expressed regrets about the action. Committeewoman Amy-Lynn Zolt commented that the full-day kindergarten was “really the only thing we have added that was for the kids,” and Committeeman James Chellel, running for re-election this fall, said he would make it a campaign promise to “look for a way” to fund the program in the near future.
Prior to the start of the meeting, Joe Knight, a frequent school critic, had urged the School Committee to repeal the fiscal 2009 budget and come up with a new plan for savings and deficit reduction.
Prior to the vote on the all-day kindergarten, School Committeeman David Coughlin had sought a legal opinion as to whether the budget could be cut by one line item, as Nordquist’s motion would do, or whether the whole budget would have to be re-opened. After being told that the line-item procedure would not be incorrect, Coughlin did not object further and the committee voted 6 to 0 to approve it.
School officials said, however, that the current all-day kindergarten programs that are in place at the Baldwin and Cunningham Elementary schools will remain in place because they are funded by grant money.
In other matters, the committee heard a presentation from Ann Burke regarding the implementation of new legislation known as the Lindsay Ann Burke Act that requires schools to establish a policy for addressing the topic of teen dating violence in the health curriculum.
Burke, whose 23-year-old daughter, Lindsay, was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend in 2003, has established a memorial fund that offers workshops and resources on teen dating violence. Through the legislative act, schools are now required to teach age-appropriate dating violence education in the health curriculum in grades 7-12, provide dating violence training to school staff and teachers, and hold awareness seminars for parents on the topic.