Concord’s school board voted Wednesday to go ahead with a budget that doesn’t include an expansion to full-day kindergarten.
The budget proposal will be subject to upcoming public hearings before it’s finalized.
“We voted not to include it at this time,” said Clint Cogswell, the school board president. “That doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. It just means the budget we’re presenting to the public is going to be about a 4.5 percent increase (to the tax rate) without all-day kindergarten.”
If the budget included full-day kindergarten, it would have represented an increase to the school district’s portion of the tax rate of more than 6 percent, he said.
Two public hearings are scheduled for the board to receive feedback on the proposal. The first is March 20 at 7 p.m. at Mill Brook School. The second is March 22 at 5:30 p.m. at Rundlett Middle School.
“I imagine we’ll hear an awful lot about it,” Cogswell said of the decision not to include an expansion to full-day kindergarten.
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at
@NickBReid.)