4K is another way the State can pull the rug out from under us

I'm a bit concerned with how the Verona Area School District is trying to sell the expense of the 4-year-old kindergarten program. In a nutshell, they're saying that the program will be expensive to start up for the first couple years, but State aid will more than cover the cost beyond the third year. They put forth the lure of an "investment" that will eventually contribute to easing budget woes in other areas.

There's a very dangerous assumption built in to that argument. They seem to be assuming that the State will not decrease the funding amounts as soon as a bunch of school districts start to take advantage of it.

I would think that, by now, VASD would be all too familiar with how these sorts of scenarios end up working out. The State funds costly programs nicely until they get off the ground and become ingrained in the expectations of the communities that they benefit. State funding slowly dries up shortly thereafter. In the end, it's the local governmental units that get stuck with the tab because the local officials are the ones that look like the bad guys when they try to claim that they can't afford it. Nobody looks beyond the locals to see that the State has once again pulled the rug out from beneath them.

In a time where VASD is repeatedly telling its taxpayers that budgets are tight because of decreasing State aid and increasing costs, I find it completely unacceptable that they're looking to gamble a large amount of money on a new program with potentially false hopes.