Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 37
Mayor Donchess
Mr. Farrington or Dr. Brown do you want to answer? One thing we should make clear about the
kindergarten, right now there is full day kindergarten in 5 of the 12 elementary schools. So this would
equalize the education offered in all the schools.
Paula Johnson
There’s no such thing as equalization. One person can be always be smarter or less smarter than
the other person. Life is not equal.
Mayor Donchess
Well still we have some elementary schools with full day kindergarten now and others without. | don’t
know if you call that unequal or not but that’s the fact.
Paula Johnson
But you know Mayor we have some people who get nice raises in public sector, and we have people
who don’t get in private, and we have people on social security and disabilities who got zero raise this
year which isn’t equal and fair. There’s no such thing as fairness in this world.
Mayor Donchess
| think the question is by assigning 10 % teachers into full day kindergarten how will that affect class
sizes for other students.
Superintendent Brown
Thank you your Honor. My name is Connie Brown. |’m the interim Superintendent of Schools for the
Nashua School Department. We are capping the kindergarten enrollments at 18. We are also
providing para support 1 per 2 kindergarten classrooms. We’re going to balance the classrooms.
We have some uneven enrollments in some of the schools right now and we are going to use 10
classroom teachers to initiate the all-day kindergarten for all the students here in Nashua. To that
Mayor’s point, we have 5 schools currently that offer all-day kindergarten. We will expand that to all
12.
Paula Johnson
So you have some school’s classrooms that are unbalanced. So that means that you’re going to
bring them up to the 25 kid level or whatever it per contract?
Superintendent Brown
I’m not sure where you got the 25. Are you referring to the collective bargaining agreement or the
State guidelines that we use?
Paula Johnson
It would have to be the collective bargaining because any kids over that amount we pay overage, am
| correct?
