City to offer pre-k classes
$1M grant has Schenectady set for February start date
As the city school district weighs whether elementary students enrolled in the hybrid learning model will return to the classroom next week, universal full-day pre-k classes for 4-year-olds is poised to resume next month.
“We need to pull some people together to discuss the plan and try to begin pre-kindergarten at some point in February,” said district spokeswoman Karen Corona on Tuesday.
She said Schenectady is able to start up the program for hundreds of youngsters because the district recently received a $1.05 million grant from the state Department of Education.
The budget for universal pre-k, which serves around 400 youngsters, is now $2.6 million, down about $300,000 from what district officials had originally anticipated, Corona said.
She said some community-based organizations, including Head Start and the Schenectady Day Nursery, have stepped up to the plate and in the interim offered instruction to youths as the district waited for word about the state funding, and then last month sent out a notice to parents that the program had been sunk because the grant money hadn’t come through.
“We had told parents at the beginning of the (school) year that our intent was to start pre-k back in January but then when in the middle of December we still had not received notification or any idea if we were going to get the funding or not, we had to put the pause on this again, so obviously now we can begin planning to open it up in February,” said Corona.
She said part of that planning by district leaders because of COVID -19 restrictions will focus on how many students to put in a classroom and in what school buildings if the district even allows that or stays all-remote as coronavirus cases in the region mount.
The start of the pre-k program in the fall was delayed until January as part of sweeping changes to plug an anticipated $29 million loss in state aid that saw the district cut about 450 employees in three phases, including teachers, teaching assistants, lunch monitors and middle school principals as well as temporarily shut down some school buildings and making grades 7-12 learning strictly online.
The cost saving moves collectively amounted to about $28 million less in spending, erasing many of the gains in this urban district that has for years lamented that it had been shortchanged when it comes to state aid.
On Monday, the district released data that showed 20 staff members, including hybrid, virtual and office employees, had tested positive for COVID -19 from Dec. 24 to Jan. 4. Over that same time span,
11 students contracted the potentially deadly virus.
While it’s unclear how many other staff and students had to be quarantined, that forced the district to make the decision to go all-virtual last month, a move that expires at the end of this week, said Corona.
“I think we’ll be looking at what the positivity rate is within the school community over the break and then what things look like mid-week and then hopefully early on Friday we’ll be able to communicate what the plan is for Monday” said Corona. “We’re trying to do the best with the information that we have because it changes every day.”
On Tuesday, Schenectady County had 118 new COVID -19 cases.
The news Tuesday about pre-k comes a month after the district mailed out a notice to parents informing them that the pre-k program that serves hundreds of youngsters would remain offline because they found
out from the state Education Department that the funds “have not been released.”
“At present, there is not an estimated date of when they will be,” the letter dated Dec. 7 reads.
It mentions that the state can’t provide any assurances regarding funding because the Division of Budget wanted to see how much money might be allocated for the New York state in the federal stimulus package and that it was unclear when the federal government would pass another COVID relief package.
“Due to this information and our efforts to be fiscally responsible, (Schenectady City School District) has decided not to re-open Pre-k on January 4, 2021,” states the letter. “While we understand many of you have been anxious for UPK to reopen, our program is completely operated through state funding.”
The notice in the second-to-last paragraph urges parents to contact their elected officials.