Early-kindergarten screens now cost $35 in Apache Junction school district

To get a 4-year-old child enrolled in kindergarten at Apache Junction Unified School District, parents will pay a new non-refundable $35 fee for the child to be screened to see if they are ready to learn with 5 year olds.

The AJUSD governing board voted unanimously April 23 to approve the fee for early-kindergarten screenings.

Kindergarten students must be 5 years old by Aug. 31 to enroll for the 2024-25 school year, according to the district’s website.

“So what I’m asking for on behalf of the district is to put a $35 fee for parents who feel that their children are ready for kindergarten before the age of 5. So basically Sept. 1 is the cutoff date; any child that will be 4 before that we would want to early-screen them to make sure that they are properly ready to enter kindergarten to be on the same grade level exiting kindergarten going into first grade,” Meara Verna, AJUSD’s executive director of educational services, said to the board.

Kindergarten teachers will proctor the screening’s academic and developmental components and will make a recommendation whether or not to accept that student for kindergarten that year, she said.

“We just want to make sure that because they’re younger they’re going to be on par to be able to compete with their other classmates that are already 5 years old,” Verna said.

“(T)hat screening, there’s two parts to that — there’s the academic part and the social part, which she talked about, where they’ll spend some time in an actual classroom setting with other kids to see how that socialization works to make sure they are actually ready for kindergarten,” AJUSD Superintendent Robert Pappalardo told the board.

The district has done kindergarten screenings in the past but did not have a process for early-kindergarten screenings, Verna said at an April 9 work session, according to the meeting’s minutes.

In the past the district has accepted younger students but has had to remove some children because they were not ready, Pappalardo said at the April 9 work session, according to the meeting’s minutes.

Richard H. Dyer can be reached at rdyer@iniusa.org, or on X @rhdyer. To voice your opinion on this story, connect with us at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.