investigation of the attitudes of selected persons toward public schools' responsibility for school-age child care

The purpose of this investigation was to compare the attitudes of district superintendents, school board chairpersons and elementary principals toward Florida public schools' responsibility for school-age child care. A survey was sent to 534 subjects and a total of 455 surveys were returned. Each participant indicated certain demographic information and, in addition, responded to the six attitude items. The demographic data were analyzed by each opinion item on the survey. Utilizing cross-tabulation procedures, chi-square statistics were reported. Cooper's test for item polarity was also utilized. In order to determine the strength of the association between the independent demographic variables and the dependent opinion variables, an analysis of variance was done. In addition, the Scheffe procedure was used. The findings of the study indicated that a majority of the respondents (65.1%) do not agree that school-age child care should be a responsibility of the public schools. However, if school-age child care is located in the public schools, a majority of the respondents (58.5%) agree with it being administered by public school personnel and a similar percentage disagree with the program being administered by community agencies. A large percentage (84.6%) agree that school-age child care should be primarily financed through fees paid by parents and 93.3% disagree with funding from school board budget. There is no significant difference in attitudes toward the issue among the three responding groups. In addition, there is no significant relationship between the number of K-12 students in the school district and the attitudes of corresponding respondents nor between the socio-economic level of the school's population and the attitudes. There is a significant relationship between the attitudes of the respondents and the following variables: geographic location of the school district; present status of the district involvement with school-age child care; and the principals' experience with school-age child care.