KEY POINTS:
The Auckland Kindergarten Association is threatening to drop the Government's 20 hours free early childhood education scheme before it has even started.
General manager Tanya Harvey said the member centres needed a 50c an hour optional charge from parents to provide the free hours.
But if parents didn't pay, it would have to opt out.
Despite the small size of the charge, Ms Harvey said parents were considering refusing to pay, saying free should mean free.
It was particularly a problem in higher income areas, she said.
"There are only two possibilities, either parents pay the so-called 'optional charges' and we stay in the scheme, or parents don't pay and we opt back out again."
She said the association, which has 107 member kindergartens serving around 9000 families, would review its position monthly and have a better idea of its situation by year's end.
Ms Harvey said the $1.1 million annually the Auckland kindergartens get from charitable trusts was also under threat, with some supporters indicating they believed they wouldn't need to support the service if care wasn't free.
New Zealand Kindergarten Association president Karen Boyes said its position of centres opting in to the scheme was unchanged. The Auckland association was not part of the NZ organisation.
The Government's free early childhood education scheme will be launched on Sunday. The policy aimed to get more pre-schoolers into early childhood education by providing 3 and 4-year-olds 20 free hours a week.
However, many providers said the Government funding was not enough to cover costs.
In Parliament yesterday, Education Minister Steve Maharey said while there would not be 86,000 children covered by the policy immediately, there would be a substantial number.
Mr Maharey said the numbers would grow over time. He said he thought a "scare campaign" had lowered the numbers.
