(Source: MIRS.news, Published 04/16/2024) Children must be enrolled in kindergarten for the 2025-26 school year if they are at least 5 years old on Sept. 1, 2025, under legislation approved in the Senate Tuesday, 21-15.
SB 285 by Senate Education Chair Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia) alters Michigan's statute that does not make school attendance mandatory until the child is set to turn 6 years old on or before Dec. 1 of the academic year. Although children can enroll in kindergarten if they turn 5 years old between Sept. 1 and Dec. 1 of that school year, and if their parents sign a waiver, kindergarten is not mandatory in Michigan.
A student could enter first grade without kindergarten in Michigan, which is a precedent Polehanki's bill would eliminate.
According to statewide numbers gathered by MI School Data, 110,738 students were enrolled in kindergarten for the 2023-24 school year. In the 2022-23 academic year, 113,864 students were enrolled in kindergarten, and before the COVID-19 pandemic, 117,694 were enrolled for the 2018-19 school year.
Ultimately, between the 2018-19 school year and the current academic year, the number of kindergarten students in Michigan fell by nearly 6 percent.
Another component of Polehanki's bill is requiring any school district and public school academy offering first-grade classrooms to provide kindergarten. Her legislation additionally permits parents and legal guardians to delay their 5-year-old child's enrollment for one school year if they notify an applicable school in writing.
Sen. Ruth Johnson (R-Holly) was the one Republican to join Democrats in supporting SB 285 .
According to the Senate Fiscal Agency (SFA), based on using the first-grade pupil counts as a proxy for entering kindergarten counts, the state could face a $43.3 million annual increase when it comes to the target foundation allowance of $9,608 per-student that was appropriated for in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024.
Simultaneously, the Senate PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee is looking to boost schools' foundation allowance to $9,910 per pupil in the next state budget covering FY '25, which will cost $10.64 billion total.
Polehanki said in the Senate today that as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Democratic legislators push forward with their goal to someday make preschool universal for all 4-year-old Michiganders, "it doesn't make sense that kindergarten continues to be optional."
"We must strive to create a culture and expectation here in our state that kids' formal education should begin early, and we're giving parents a variety of choices to accomplish this. My bill gives parents the option for their kids to attend kindergarten in public, private parochial or home school for a half-day or full day," Polehanki said.
"Again, the goal of this legislation is to create a culture in which early education is valued and viewed as the indispensable building block that it is."
Meanwhile, ahead of voting against SB 285 , Sen. Thomas Albert (R-Lowell) said the jury is still out when his 2-year-old twins will be entering school, especially as they have late birthdays.
"This new opt-out process softens the original proposed mandate and improves the legislation in some ways, but the process itself raises potential concerns about underlying unwarranted monitoring of families' personal education decisions," Albert said, noting how the legislation requires parents to notify a school if they are using a delay. "Is this a step toward the tracking of some families who might homeschool or send their kids to private school? That's none of the state's business."
