While all-day Kindergarten has support from most educators, one school district chooses to keep a majority of its students in kindergarten for only half a day.

Discovered through our Public Insight Network, Jessie Thompson fixes ravioli for her family while two-year-old Gavin watches the Disney Channel and six-year-old Riley works outside with dad.

Riley attends Heritage Trails Elementary in Moore Public Schools; one of just 22 students at the institution picked to attend all-day Kindergarten.

Jessie loves the fact that Riley was picked in a lottery system to go to school all-day although she raised concerns at first.

“He did the half-day pre-K last year and he had a little bit of a problem adjusting to time away from home, but he’s reading level 2 books now, just about at a second grade level.”

The move to all-day Kindergarten started with the passage of Senate Bill 982, the Achieving Classroom Excellence Act in 2005.

Under the bill signed by then Governor Brad Henry all schools needed to provide all-day kindergarten for their students by 2011.

Lawmakers later pushed it back by two years to the start of the 2013/2014 school year.

A freedom of information request by KOSU to the State Department of Education shows all but 14 of the state’s 520 school districts have 100% of students enrolled in all-day Kindergarten.

Moore Public School, the largest of those out of compliance, holds half-day kindergarten for more than 1,100 of its students

Superintendent Susan Pierce explains as the largest growing district in the state it doesn’t have the space to provide all-day kindergarten for every student

“Right now capacity for full day kindergarten and converting all of our classes to full day prohibit us from having all of our kindergarten classes be converted, but we do have an offering of full day kindergarten.”

But, only for kids like Riley who were picked to be in the full-day classes.

Superintendent Pierce believes the district is staying true to the law as she interprets it.

“That would be a requirement for all schools to have converted all programs to full day when Oklahoma reached the regional funding average or the funding average for our region, our surrounding states.”

The State Department of Education knows about Moore’s decision.

“We understand the Moore Public School is questioning that interpretation of the law. I think that’s well within their local right to do that and we’ll see how that challenge moves through the process.”

Chief of Staff Joel Robison believes lawmakers removed that provision later because it wasn’t feasible.

He says over the summer Regional Accreditation Officers or RAOs will visit Moore to make sure the school follows Department of Education rules and Oklahoma law.

“There will be RAOs discussing this with Moore. I suspect if Moore wants to push this it will end up in court and we’ll let the court decide what the interpretation of that law is.”

While the Department of Education and even Moore Superintendent Pierce recognize the need for all-day kindergarten, not all Oklahomans see its importance.

Rebecca Westbrook Toker taught special education and elementary education in a “home school away from home” in Durant.

She says all-day Kindergarten puts too much stress on the kids.

“I think that the length of the day is way too much for kiddos. They need more sleep than that and they don’t need to be getting out of bed at like 6:00 or 6:30 maybe 7:00 if they’re lucky.”

In a few years, when her son reaches kindergarten age, she will likely not have him participate in all-day classes.

“I have no uncertainty about the idea that I’ll have him in a non-traditional program. I don’t feel that full-day kindergarten is appropriate. I’ll either home school him or have him in a program that’s shorter.”

For Jessie Thompson just finishing up dinner, she hopes that she doesn’t have to go through the lottery system when Gavin hits kindergarten in 2016.

“The fact that we were able to get full day for riley we were really excited and happy and yeah, now that we don’t have to worry about it for Gavin is, yeah, it’s a weight off.”

A bill to make the move to all-day kindergarten optional rather than mandatory died in the legislature this session when it failed to get a hearing in the Senate.

Senate Bill 1062 would change workers comp from a court system to an administrative one, allows some businesses to opt-out of the system under certain circumstances.

KOSU Capitol Bureau Chief Michael Cross got a chance to sit down with Representative Leslie Osborn who carried the bill on the House floor to answer the question: “What happens now?”

This required a now familiar announcement from the presiding Speaker.

“A Quorum call has been requested…”

The Wednesday quorum call makes the 15^th time in the last 19 legislative days.

Capitol reporter Peter J- Rudy is covering his seventh legislative session and says he can’t remember anything like this in the past.

Rudy remembers one day when the House was set to honor O-H-P spokesman Pete Norwood who had died of a heart attack the week prior.

He says the whole family was waiting and the House couldn’t get the required 51 members to show up.

“So they had to have a quorum call and so the family is there, and I just think that sends a horrible message that the press is here on time, there are people in the gallery who are here at 9:00 for a 9:00 start and lawmakers weren’t here to do that.”

Now, he does say in the past the House would usually throw up a non-controversial bill even before the Morning Prayer to give lawmakers time to get on the floor.

“I don’t know if they just weren’t following the strict letter of the rule back then and they are now and so we’re noticing it, but they also weren’t doing this the first two and a half months of session.”

So, I went to speak with Representative Joe Dorman who in his eleventh session is one of the senior Representatives in a term limited House.

Dorman also spent nearly ten years before hand in the House as a staff member.

He says tardiness comes and goes depending on the session start time, but admits having a quorum at the beginning of session only 25-percent of the time in the past month is a little disappointing.

“I will often check in from my office so they can make quorum and then go down once we start business, just trying to maximize my time as much as possible. But it’s been surprising to see so many sessions start as late as they have both in the morning and the afternoons.”

One thing to mention: The tone you are hearing in the background is roll call in the Senate.

Lawmakers in that chamber keep the Roll Call open until they have the required 26 members.

And, that historically has always takes between 15 and 20 minutes.

Senate Bill 1008, to create the Office of Privatization, has now passed the House and the Senate.

With privatization supported by a majority of lawmakers it could easily move to the governor.

Proponents of privatization usually quote the mantra: “If it’s listed in the Yellow Pages than it doesn’t need to be done by the Government”

In other words, if something is currently done in the private sector, then it should be taken out of the hands of the public sector.

That’s the goal behind Senate Bill 1008 to create the Office of Privatization.

Senator Greg Treat created the bill to have a one-stop shop for the issue of privatization under the control of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services.

“It’s in order to have a repository of information and expertise on how to privatize state functions. Currently everything we do is on an ad hoc basis, so if we move to privatize something we have to recreate the wheel every time.”

Oklahoma is no stranger to privatization becoming one of the first states to use private prisons in the early 90s.

Right now, just under 25% of Oklahoma prisoners are eligible for medium or higher security prisons, according to the Department of Corrections.

DOC Director Justin Jones likes the idea of a centralized focus on privatization for all of Oklahoma rather than an agency by agency approach.

“Let’s do an analysis, you know, let’s look at the research on privatize food service, or let’s look at the research on privatizing the manufacturing of inmate clothing or something like that. It’s certainly healthy.”

Having dealt closely with the privatization of services, Jones warns that any move must be done cautiously to protect the taxpayer.

“Contracting with private prisons is no different than when we out sourced our pharmacy or outsourced our kidney dialysis. You want to make sure you’re getting quality in your outsourcing of medical services.”

The Office of Privatization idea originated from Governor Fallin’s Bold Ideas Task Force in 2011 made up of about 45 people from the private sector.

So, it has her support as well as the Secretary of Finance Preston Doerflinger who would oversee the office.

While he hopes this will help improve state government to work more efficiently, Doerflinger says switching from public to private services can’t be taken lightly.

“If you privatize something and you’re no longer providing that service within state government and you basically break down your structure that you had to provide that service, then it’s going to be expensive to try and bring that service back into house.”

SB 1008 originally created an entirely new office, but was changed after opposition from Republicans who felt it was just creating another agency within state government.

So, it has since been amended to utilize the existing employees within the Office of Management and Enterprise Services.

Doerflinger says his office and current personnel are quite capable of doing this without more hires.

“It might require some additional skills to add to the team that we don’t currently have, but I certainly believe this agency has within it the ability to evaluate these types of opportunities and determine if they are viable or not.”

While the bill is getting strong support from the majority Republicans, Democrats are fighting it.

Oklahoma City Representative Richard Morrissette voted against the bill in House committee and is fighting what he calls a constant push to privatize all of government.

“There are functions like, it just goes right to the base core, when your house is on fire, you call the fire department when there’s a burglar at your door you call the police department, there are some functions in our society that are best done by the government entity.”

While Morrissette agrees there needs to be public-private partnership, he sees a much more serious path laid out by the GOP.

“What they’re after folks is to take your tax dollars and put it in the pockets of their crony friends that’s what this is about okay. It’s not about efficiencies it’s not about doing things better. It’s about taking public money and putting it in the hands of their crony friends.”

But, Senator Treat says any function which can be taken over by the private sector should be handed over to a company.

“A good example is collecting past due moneys. There are plenty of collections companies in the United States and Oklahoma specifically that do that with a much greater success rate than we do internally.”

Treat says he believes the private sector can do work more efficiently and effectively saving the state money.

The Senate passed the bill 36 to 10, and the House passed it 65 to 28.

The bill will return to the Senate in order to accept House amendments to keep the duties in the OMES rather than creating a new agency.