The New Paltz Central School District (NPCSD) announced last week that it would offer grant-funded free pre-K this fall for any student turning four years old by Friday, December 1. But some district teachers last week expressed concerns about who will be involved in the program and what it will mean for kids and the community.
Several teachers spoke about the district’s pre-K plans during the public comment period during a meeting of the NPCSD Board of Education held on Wednesday, May 17. Paulette Easterlin, a 5th grade teacher at Lenape Elementary School, said that New Paltz United Teachers agreed with administrators and trustees about the value of early education as a contributor to academic success, but said the district’s efforts to solicit bidders from within the community were inadequate.
On Tuesday, April 18, trustees unanimously approved the acceptance of a proposal from New Windsor-based Healthy Kids Programs to administer the district’s universal pre-K program, a move critics of the plan last week said would be inequitable to students, would not require the use of certified teachers, and could hurt local daycare providers.
“Who will be providing the sub coverage when Healthy Kids is short staffed?” asked Elayne Zinn, a kindergarten teacher at Duzine Elementary.“Will these teachers have experience working with the ENL population and also students who receive related services? How will our neediest children currently in ICT (integrated co-teaching) classes who have outside programs…be impacted when excluded from this opportunity? They will have to wait to acclimate to the building and be around their same age peers until kindergarten. They will lose a whole year with their peers.”
Kacie Fisher, a co-teacher at Lenape Elementary said a committee led by former Deputy Superintendent Michelle Martoni and including the district’s kindergarten team met between April-July 2022 to create a universal pre-K plan, but that the latest plans seem to have been put together with no input from teachers.
There have been no meetings of the preschool committee this school year under our new leadership and we were not part of the planning process this year and were completely left in the dark out of this decision,” said Fisher.
Thus far, the district has confirmed that they plan on having four grant-funded universal pre-K classrooms with 18 students per class, all of which will include “specials” like music, art, library, and physical education. Duzine Elementary, which may house at least some of the classrooms, will host an informational meeting about the pre-K plans in the school’s library on Thursday, June 1 at 6:00 p.m., at which parents will have their first opportunity to register their children for the program.
The details of that program are still being worked out, particularly as the district plans on sending out a second request for proposals from local organizations. The last time around, Healthy Kids was the only organization to respond, but some at the meeting said the district could have been more locally inclusive. At that same meeting, Superintendent Stephen Gratto said that after meeting with teachers to address their concerns, he didn’t disagree.
“The teachers likely pointed out that…we could have reached out more to the individual childcare units in the district, and that childcare facilities in the district will suffer to some extent cause they’ll be losing students,” Gratto said, adding that he’d since reached out to numerous local childcare providers and preschools, and that some expressed interest in taking a crack at a new RFP.
“What we’re going to do is we’re going to do another RFP for organizations to run a pre-K using UPK (grant) money perhaps in the building, or if they present a plan outside the building, I guess we would consider that as well,” Gratto said.
While the district still plans on having Healthy Kids operate at least one of the pre-K classrooms, Gratto said they are open to bringing in local providers as well.
“We’re hopeful that some New Paltz groups will be successful and meet the requirements,” Gratto said. “I’ll personally bring them the RFP and discuss it with them what they need to do. We can’t help them with the process because it has to be fair to everybody, but we certainly can get them all the information.”
In a May 19 letter to the NPCSD community, Gratto said that the hope of having certified teachers in pre-K classrooms may not be realistic.
“It is worth noting that most privately run pre-K programs in our area do not employ certified teachers for all of their classrooms,” Gratto said.“It is unlikely that teachers provided by the CBOs (community based organizations) who are running UPK classes for us will be certified. While the UPK grant does not require that teachers be certified, it is required that they be working toward certification.”
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