Bill to mandate kindergarten passes Assembly

Monday, June 30, 1997 | 11:01 a.m.

AB6, by Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, moved Sunday to the Senate for final legislative action after being debated by various Assembly committees since February.

AB6 requires parents who opt out of sending their 6-year-olds to kindergarten to have those children tested before they enter first grade. If they failed to pass the test, they would be placed in kindergarten.

AB6 also requires school districts that have too few pupils to establish kindergartens to transport 6-year-olds to other schools or provide home-teaching kits to their parents.

The bill appropriates $100,000 to prepare those home kits as well as to develop the first-grade evaluation tests. The home kit program has been available to rural communities since 1991.

AB6 originally required kindergarten attendance for all Nevada 6-year-olds. But after protests from parents who prefer to home-school their children, the bill was changed to allow parents to opt out of kindergarten.

Giunchigliani said she was pleased with the bill's final form. But she says she's not yet sure how it will fare in the Republican-controlled Senate.

"I just don't have any feel for that," Giunchigliani said. "I haven't really started talking to them about it."

While five Assembly Republicans joined with Democrats to back the bill, the 12 other GOP Assembly members opposed it. They were: Merle Berman, Deanna Braunlin, Barbara Cegavske, Jack Close, Dennis Nolan and Kathy Von Tobel of Las Vegas; Lynn Hettrick of Gardnerville; Don Gustavson of Sun Valley; David Humke of Reno; John Marvel of Battle Mountain; Mark Amodei of Carson City; and John Carpenter of Elko.

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