Photo: Ksenia Chernaya, Pexels

Parents can’t always count on kindergarten. That’s the moral of a story told in the Atlantic.

“At age 5 and 6, children are at a crucial stage in brain development,” the Atlantic’s article says. “Educators, advocates, researchers, and state officials largely agree that full-day [kindergarten] programming is beneficial for children, both academically and socially. Studies have shown that kids enrolled in full-day offerings make greater advances in literacy than those enrolled in half-day ones. These gains are maintained for years.”

In other words, free, full-day kindergarten programs ought to be easy to find.

However the growth of kindergarten in public schools, the article explains, has “happened gradually. It arrived in the 19th century as a privately funded educational venture. By the start of World War I, the grade had become part of all major city public-school districts, and by 1965, more than 2 million children across 40 states were enrolled. Most early kindergarten programs offered only half-day coverage, but in the past several decades, full-day programs have become more common. The grade got more attention in the early 2000s with the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act.”

Today, full-day kindergarten can still be hard to find. The Atlantic points to Ojeya Cruz Banks who moved from New Zealand to Ohio with her child and found that “The only available option was a half-day program that would bus students to a day-care center on the outskirts of town for the afternoon. The district did offer a limited number of full-day slots, but those had all been claimed in a lottery earlier that spring and came with a tuition cost.”

And while the “majority of U.S. schoolchildren do go to kindergarten,” the article adds, “and 79 percent of those kids are enrolled in full-day programs,” kindergarten “is not guaranteed nationwide. The country’s kindergarten policies vary from state to state, district to district, and even within school systems themselves. At least 29 states—both red and blue—do not mandate that districts offer full-day kindergarten.”

Even in Massachusetts, as we’ve blogged, “there are 38 school districts in Massachusetts that have charged tuition for full-day kindergarten during the last few years.”

This leaves some families on their own.

“When governments don’t guarantee adequate early-childhood education, the burden becomes “all internalized to the family,” Anna Thomas, a senior policy analyst at the childhood advocacy group Voices for Utah Children says in the article. “All the stress, all the challenge, all the punishment for not making it work—families just take that on, especially moms.”

Having to pay for kindergarten also puts an economic strain on families.

“Economically, with food costs rising, inflation at historic highs, and gasoline prices spiking, American families need help—mine included,” the article’s author Keija Parssinen, an assistant English professor at Kenyon College, concludes. “I recently learned that my son would be able to attend our school’s full-day program because someone else had declined their spot. The knowledge brought relief but also stress. I couldn’t turn down the learning, play, and socializing that the full-day option offered, but I knew that paying nearly $4,000 a year (not including aftercare fees) would mean having less to put toward the rising cost of living, medical debts, or an emergency fund.”

One solution, Parssinen writes:

“Although not a panacea for the child-care crisis or recent educational losses, establishing a nationwide free, full-day program would bring much-needed support to families across the country. It’s long overdue.”

Be sure to check out the article and share it on social media with the hashtag #FullDayK.