To the Editor:

On Tuesday, June 21, the Guilderland Central School District held an information session at Pine Bush Elementary School regarding the district’s plans to lease space to a private prekindergarten provider this fall.

The meeting was in response to a petition that was circulated and signed by over 100 parents and staff who raised concerns about the pre-K plan at Pine Bush Elementary School. The petition suggested that the district was not transparent in its planning process to bring pre-K to Guilderland, and in particular to place the classrooms in the primary grade “blue pod” at Pine Bush Elementary School.

The purpose of the meeting was to summarize the process by which the district arrived at this plan and to listen to the questions and concerns about the implementation of the program in the fall.

First, I would like to thank everyone who joined us last week. The entire board of education and administration listened carefully to the concerns and questions that were raised that evening.

As promised, we did some additional research to clarify our understanding of the regulations governing programs that serve preschool-age children. We posted those regulations to our website. We also learned that we had more flexibility than we originally thought about the locations of bathrooms for use by the children in the pre-K programs.

In September, we will welcome Victory Child Care to three of our school buildings. This high-quality school program will serve many 3- and 4-year-old children and families from our community.

They will work in classrooms that have been carefully selected by the district based on our extensive review of available space and the needs of each building as a whole. We have determined that, if we need another section of kindergarten at Pine Bush, it will be placed in the blue pod with the other primary classrooms, and a section of pre-K will move.

The school district is confident that our new relationship with Victory Child Care will be one that benefits all of the children we serve and our community as a whole. We are also confident that our investment of time fine-tuning our implementation plans with Victory will result in a safe, secure, healthy and productive learning environment for all students.

Marie Wiles, Ph.D.

Superintendent

Guilderland Central School District

Editor’s note: See related story on Victory Child Care in this week’s edition. Go online to AltamontEnterprise.com to read about the June 21 meeting at Pine Bush Elementary School.