To the Editor:

While I have been critical of the Guilderland Central School District’s administration and board of education in the past, I believe that much of the current criticism is unfounded. As Superintendent Marie Wiles has outlined on the district website ... renting out space to a pre-K provider has been a multi-year process that has been part of board discussions many times.

Further, groups of citizens have worked in groups and committees to study different options for the use of excess space in the district. This was not a quick, secretive, behind-the-scenes money grab. Finally, I struggle to understand how pre-K students “distracting” kindergarten students are any more disruptive than kindergarten students “distracting” first-grade students, and so on.

Putting pre-K in the elementary schools is a well-studied program that brings many benefits to the students and community; an increasing number of school districts in the area and around the state are doing similar expansions of the educational program.

While the choice of which “pod” to use and the security protocols that will be implemented can and should be explained to parents, to suggest that the district has implemented pre-K clandestinely and without community input is disingenuous.

Nicholas Fahrenkopf

Altamont

Editor’s note: Nicholas Fahrenkopf served on the task force that evaluated options to fill empty Guilderland classrooms. See related story.