PAWTUCKET — A vote by the School Committee to institute full-day kindergarten in each of the city’s 10 elementary schools is stirring controversy, not on philosophical grounds –– even critics acknowledge the plan’s educational soundness –– but because of the impact on the budget.

The vote to go ahead with full-day kindergarten was taken despite a school budget deficit currently projected at $5.4 million.

“I just don’t know where the money is supposed to come from,” School Committee member David A. Coughlin said yesterday.

“I just don’t think it was a fiscally responsible thing to do, given our situation in the district right now.”

The vote was 5 to 2 to approve a $103.8-million budget containing $612,962 for the full-day kindergarten.

The vote was taken at a school budget workshop Monday evening, after Coughlin and another School Committee member, John S. Baxter Jr., tried without success to have the kindergarten appropriation removed.

Nicole A. Nordquist, James T. Chellel Jr., Joanne Bonollo, Amy Breault Zolt and Gordon Gould, the School Committee chairman, voted in favor of full-day kindergarten, even though removing the item from the budget would have slashed the deficit.

Nordquist defended the vote, saying that the plan had worked well at the Baldwin and Cunningham elementary schools, the only schools that have them at present, and are needed to raise student test scores citywide.

Zolt said that people who have spoken to her since the vote said they support the full-day kindergarten: “They know we’re in a deficit but they say this is probably one of the most important things we’ve put in our budget.”

“It is a proven fact,” Zolt said, “that children who are in full-day kindergarten, even a full-day pre-school, do much better when they go into the first grade.”

City Hall reaction was negative. Mayor James E. Doyle said the full-day-kindergarten vote was a “bad move,” coming as it did when the city is scrambling to balance its own budget and the day before the Warwick School Committee sought to cut a potential $6 million deficit by closing three schools.

“The worthiness of the all-day kindergartens isn’t the question,” said John J. Barry III, chairman of the City Council Finance Committee. “The question is whether we can afford it.”

“They’re $2.8 million in the hole this year,” Barry said, referring to the Pawtucket School Department. “We’re looking at a deficit in excess of $5 million next year. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for it.”

Both Barry and Mary E. Bray, the council president, said they wouldn’t increase taxes to finance the program. Neither, they said, would most other members of the City Council.

“Every other community is cutting programs and closing schools. We’re adding programs. It’s like we’re living in a fantasy world,” Bray said.

The full-day kindergartens that have existed at the Baldwin and Cunningham elementary schools for the past several years have been supported by an annual $366,000 grant from the state Education Department.

Elliot Krieger, the Education Department spokesman, said the money was made available through a state law that mandates an appropriation of $1,500 per pupil to schools with full-day kindergartens.

The problem, Krieger said, is that the General Assembly has level-funded the program for the past three years, so no additional money will be available unless legislators changed their position on the matter.

That appears unlikely as the state grapples with a budget deficit projected at $384 million.

Although specific figures weren’t available, Darrell Luffborough, the Cunningham Elementary School principal, said having an all-day kindergarten has helped to boost first graders’ test scores at Cunningham, chiefly by giving teachers the time to offer instruction.

“The time that we get is unbelievable. My kids are here for six hours. They get at least four good hours of instruction,” said Luffborough. “They have art, music, and PE [physical education], and lunch all week.”

Other elementary schools in the school district have kindergartens lasting just 2 1/2 hours. “It takes 20 minutes for the kids to get their coats off, say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing their happy song,” Zolt said.

“How much time do they have to learn?”

jcastell@projo.com