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RINGWOOD - Mandatory Pre-K funding tugging at wallets
(by Teresa Edmond - Staff Writer - October 15, 2008)
RINGWOOD - Officials are torn between fulfilling the educational needs of underprivileged 3- and 4-year-olds and revamping failing school facilities. And when it comes to taxpayers’ wallets, school officials fear they must choose one or the other.
The district is facing the dual pressures of expanding staff and facilities to meet a new state mandate to launch a preschool program for children who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches and working on its rejected $28.8 million school facilities referendum.
Voted down last fall, this referendum would have retired the antiquated E.G. Hewitt School and upgraded the Robert Erskine, Peter Cooper and Martin J. Ryerson schools.
School officials are also worried about the illogical pattern of following a full-day preschool education with a half-day kindergarten program. To help ease the transition between a full-day preschool and full-day first grade, the district is thinking about introducing a full-day kindergarten curriculum, according to Board of Education President Richard Schaefer.
Therefore, the Board of Education voted 6-3 at its special Oct. 6 meeting to apply for state financial aid so the district could attempt to address the full-day kindergarten issue by erecting modular classrooms at the Erskine and Cooper schools.
The state uses the free and reduced-price lunch program as a way to see which students may be considered financially disadvantaged. The state-directed preschool program was introduced to give these children a head start in early education.
Meanwhile, the school district is amending the rejected $28.8 million referendum by trimming its cost and aims to reintroduce it to voters at next April’s Board of Education election. One way the school has accomplished this is by completing the $1.3 million Ryerson roof replacement last summer, so that it is no longer part of the referendum.
“We’re still aware that the present facilities need attention, so whatever we do, we have to continue addressing that,” said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Patrick Martin. “In the meantime, the state Department of Education is mandating the preschool initiative. I’m recommending to the school board that we put together a plan for a full-day kindergarten and bring it to the voters of Ringwood.”
School officials want to provide a “wonderful, experience-based” kindergarten program with hands-on tasks that would best prepare the students for the first grade, he said.
Martin said he’s asking for the whole school community — parents, administrators and faculty — to provide their input about the full-day preschool program while he’s researching the topic, including visiting schools with this program in the tri-state region.
If the district has to put classroom and teacher additions for the preschool program as a referendum question on next April’s ballot, it would have to forego the school facilities referendum, according to Schaefer. The preschool referendum would include 15 extra teachers and modular classrooms. The modular kindergarten classrooms would be a tradeoff for the five additional classrooms at Ryerson, which was part of the facilities referendum.
The Board of Education voted at its special Oct. 6 meeting so district architect Jerry Rubino could submit the grant application on time. If the state approves, it would provide the district with 40 percent of the modular classrooms’ total cost and the district would have to come up with the remaining 60 percent.
Classroom space
The original school facilities referendum called for building five additional classrooms at Ryerson School. But that could change to accommodate the new preschool program.
According to Schaefer, Martin suggested taking back these five rooms at Ryerson and adding two modular classrooms each to Peter Cooper and Robert Erskine schools for full-day kindergarten, providing nine more classrooms.
The addition of the modular classrooms would probably cost in excess of $500,000 and would be financed over a number of years resulting in a small additional increase. The district would be entitled to about 18 percent state aid to put in the classrooms.
Even though 15 students is the ceiling number for a preschool classroom according to the state, school officials anticipate it might need to make room for 20 children per classroom. Usually the district gets 10 students per age level (3- and 4-year-olds) enrolling in the school system.
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