Issue Raised With 1st Grade Entrance Policy

Thirteen Westborough families have students in Worcester’s Kindergarten and want to attend Westborough’s first grade this fall – despite violating this school department’s entrance age policy.

Westborough is spending $65,000 this year -- $5,000 per student – for the 13 youngsters to go to Worcester, school committee members said Wednesday night.

Assistant Superintendent Daniel Mayer said the policy states that “students entering first grade must be six on or before Sept. 1 unless the student moved into Westborough after successfully completing a Kindergarten program.” Mayer said the policy seeks to allow “for the fact that sometimes different districts, different states, have different Kindergarten entrance age policies than ours.”

Several parents told the school board Wednesday night that some parents calling Westborough schools have been told they can send their children who miss the cutoff to Kindergarten in other communities and return to Westborough for first grade without penalty.

School Committee Chairman Ilyse Levine-Kanji said that “I think the problem is I don’t think that they really intended to circumvent the policy. I think because they saw what had happened last year – that we admitted people” who school officials

didn’t know were under the required age, they felt they were acting properly. “And the other problem is that in our district, our secretary must have said that this is okay,” she said.

The school committee plans to vote on how to handle these 13 students on April 10.

“Since they’ve gone through Kindergarten, it’s probably in their best interest to go on to first grade,” Levine-Kanji said.

“Otherwise, we may end up spending another $65,000 sending them all back to Worcester for first grade.”

Mayer said that at the beginning of the school year, “one of the principals noticed that a child was coming in with residency” issues.  School officials subsequently learned of more students with the same issue.

“We have families that have sent their children over to Worcester while living in Westborough to go into their Kindergarten program, which has a younger entrance age policy. When they come into our first grade in Westborough, the age of the children is below our age policy,” Mayer said.

He then contacted Worcester schools asking any students Westborough residents in their Kindergarten program this year. He then sent those families a letter “informing them that their children would not be allowed to come back here into the first grade.”

Levine-Kanji said the school board “added a clarifying sentence” to the policy in November.

School committee members said they believe the policy was written clearly.

“Your specific reason for sending your child to Worcester was to be able to use this clause to allow your child to come into the first grade, under age, relative to the policies of Westborough,”  Vice Chairman Stephen Doret said.

School committee member Nicole Sullivan said her daughter is in Kindergarten this year “and she’s a November birthday, so she missed the cutoff as well. And I had to pay for three years of preschool because the rule is what the rule is. She missed the cutoff.”

“By these families making this decision, we are writing checks for each one of those children to go to Worcester. That money is so important. Any of you who attended town meeting, the school budget talk, listened to what we are facing financially. For you to do that and take that money away from our budget, our children. And that concerns me,” Sullivan said.

“This is a huge financial loss.”