Two weeks after the Kingston City School District’s (KCSD) Board of Education’s near-unanimous vote to end Montessori at George Washington (G.W.) Elementary School, supporters of the program openly questioned the rationale.
During the June 18 school board meeting, Mariel Fiori, vice-president of the school’s Parent-Teacher Organization, read from a letter submitted to the district nine days earlier, which she said had not received a response. The letter claims that as the issue was not listed on the agenda for the June 4 school board meeting where the Montessori program’s fate was sealed was “against the principles of transparency and accountability found in the New York open meetings law.”
“The superintendent (Paul Padalino) deliver(ed) a lengthy and impromptu case against the Montessori program at George Washington Elementary,” Fiori said. “The conversation quickly escalated into a full-blown discussion about the future of the Montessori program, and the board member, Marc Rider, moved to vote to dismantle a program with nearly two decades of community investment without notice of the chance for public input.”
Fiori and others noted that the public had already approved the district’s 2025-26 budget, which includes funding for Montessori. Funding, including the cost per pupil, was one of the reasons cited by district officials and the board of education as why proceeding with Montessori was untenable. But supporters of Montessori questioned the district’s math.
Alex Billig said he’d consulted with his CPA to crunch the numbers, saying that while the costs of Montessori coaching, consultancy, and training came in at just under $2,000 per pupil, the school was still spending less than others in Kingston.
“Even if you added that full amount to the per-pupil cost listed in the New York State Transparency Report, George Washington still comes in below the state and county averages — and in fact has the lowest per-pupil cost in the entire district,” Billig said. “In 2024, even after adding that $2,000, G.W. spent over $13,000 less per pupil than Myer Elementary…That single school spent almost as much as two G.W.s, and we’re saying that Montessori is too expensive.”
Billig urged trustees to reconsider their vote to end Montessori.
“Members of the board, we cannot upend the lives of an entire community based on these types of simple math errors,” he said. “This is a disgrace. Our children deserve better than this.”
District data compiled by the New York State Education Department supports Billig’s claim that G.W. is comparatively underfunded by the KCSD. The most recent school year covered by NYSED’s data was 2023-24, which shows Myer ($39,305), Crosby ($37,600), Graves ($34,627), Chambers ($33,883), Edson ($32,500) and J.F.K. ($32,428) all spending more per pupil than George Washington ($24,044).
District officials have said that their program costs aren’t as cut and dry as the averages seen in the NYSED data, and the district’s own formula claims over $3,000 more is spent per pupil at G.W. than the average per pupil cost other schools in the KCSD. During the June 4 school board meeting, poor test results and inadequate alignment with standards applied across the entire state’s public schools were also cited as reasoning for the Montessori program’s inefficacy.
But supporters of Montessori said that the program has been an academic success, not only in the past, but also for students currently enrolled in the program. And some hope that even if the district moves forward with cutting Montessori at G.W., that it might still remain an option for some.
Leigha Butler asked that the district consider maintaining four Montessori classrooms while moving forward with the Core Knowledge Language Art (CKLA) program in others, allowing for a dual track option.
“Just as Edson (Elementary) is host to a dual language academy, G.W. could continue its existing program as part of the dual track offering,” Butler said. “Frankly, if a dual track exists in one school, isn’t it an inequity to deny it to another?”
She added that maintaining Montessori would mean “the 76 families who requested special permission to attend G.W. won’t feel like the rug is pulled out from underneath them. Consequently, it’ll foster trust and good faith in the community. And what could be better for our students?”
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