I favor speaking up for the voiceless, but public words defending others who would remain off-stage have to tell a more complete story than they do in the case of paying $3,000 in annual fees for all-day kindergarten.

Arlington resident Stephen Harrington, who has spoken persistently in the past in a successful effort to reduce fees for high school athletics, uses similar arguments about kindergarten fees, but the math stands up only because the tale is incomplete.

During public participation Jan. 26, he told the School Committee that the cost of full-day kindergarten is "ludicrous," should be lower, amounts to an illegal tax and efforts to collect it are "heavy-handed." His comments, to which committee members made no response, as per their policy, came as parents who have not paid the fee face having their children dismissed at 11 a.m. starting Jan. 30. 

Harrington concludes that parents have overpaid more than $400,000 in each of the past two years for such fees. I wanted to learn how he reached that number, so I requested a copy of his comments Jan. 27. He has not responded. If he does, I will add a link to the response to this opinion column.

Meanwhile, the claims that Harrington stated publicly appear to mirror those expressed by "Menotomy Observer" in a Jan. 25 post at Truepersons.com. The site published by an anonymous manager features anonymous comments, all of which support the site's content.

The argument there, while generous with links to public documents, constructs a case convenient for those who oppose fees and one that avoids the day-to-day practical reality of what public education costs.

Bottom line: The opinion column defends those who decline to pay for a service for their children and criticize a school administration that is merely trying to collect what it is owed. I suspect the same administration would take critical hits if it did *not* try to collect debts.

The argument "Menotomy Observer" lays out is this:

-- Arlington public school's approximately 436 kindergarten children in fiscal 2011 and two other sources yielded $1,037,561 from fees. Add to that a state grant of $246,505 for about 20 kindergarten classrooms, providing total revenue of $1,284,066.

-- Expenses for 20 teacher and 19 aides come to $1,358,024 for fiscal 2012.

-- Conclusion: "... full day kindergarten parents support the entire salary expense of the full day and half day kindergarten program. This implies that the fee assessed for full day kindergarten is twice as much as it should be and that the full day kindergarten fee should only be $1,500."

Is that true? Apart from the fact that the numbers compared are from two fiscal years, this stark schema simply avoids discussing other costs.

What about health insurance and retirement benefits? The state includes those as part per-pupil cost.

What about the costs for teacher training and development? What about substitutes? What about specialists?

What about capital costs?

All-day takes twice as many classrooms and teachers as the half-day program. Special-education aides are all day instead of half.

If this were a one-room schoolhouse, you could nail the costs, but kindergartners walk through the whole school, and their parents expect heat and lights and bathrooms wherever they are in the building.

In addition to these neglected costs, consider the funding that underlies education in Massachusetts -- the foundation budget for fiscal 2012.

The per-pupil foundation budget for half-day kindergarten is $3,377.55; for full day, it's $6,755.13. That makes all-day kindergarten costs $3,377.58 more than half day for a basic program.  

For fiscal 2012, the state says we are spending at 133.9 percent of foundation. If the cost in excess of foundation is applied equally across all students, half day would cost $4,522.54 per pupil and full day would cost $9,045.11. 

Still, the cost of a full-day program is more than double the half-day cost. Consider:

A teacher is entitled, by contract, to a 45-minute prep period and a 30-minute duty-free lunch. Running a half-day program, you can dismiss the morning kindergarten, give the teacher 75 minutes for prep and lunch, and then bring in the afternoon kindergarten. 

For a full-day program, you now need to hire a 0.2 specialty teacher (art, music, phys ed) to cover the teacher's prep time and provide a supervised lunch period.

From this, you could conclude that the cost to expand a half-day program to full day in Arlington is well over $4,000. In that light, a fee of $3,000 could be easily justified because the $246,505 in grants, divided by 336 half-day students, provides about $733 per pupil of state support for the program. 

Some might conclude the fee could be raised from $500 to $700 per pupil before you run up against a violation of the rules cited by "Menotomy Observer."

The controversy about fees for athletics began in acrimony in November 2010 and ended in compromise last March. The latter approach might work in this case, though I won't hold my breath waiting for the relatively small group of parents who have not paid the fee to show up before the School Committee.