ANACORTES — School Board members voted unanimously Thursday night to add full-day kindergarten to every elementary school in the district.

Officials found out Thursday afternoon that a grant to add full-day kindergarten at Whitney School will pay for three, full-time teachers there and for 53 students. That grant is provided by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Meanwhile, the rest of the district’s schools would then have full-day kindergarten paid for by grant dollars that pay to, among other things, reduce class size, Superintendent Chris Borgen said.

Board members expressed concerns about using grant money to fund the kindergarten program. At the heart of the debate was whether the money could dry up and make the program unstable.

“Funding for education long-term is dismal,” said board member Kris Lytton. “The concern about grants is they go away.”

But Borgen seemed confident that the program could endure.

“If for some reason those grants dried up, we have other (funding) mechanisms in place,” he said.