A new path for Lewisboro Elementary School? Residents to vote on new spending plan in October

CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - Katonah-Lewisboro School District residents will be asked on Oct. 20 to reconsider their rejection of $24.5 million in borrowing to upgrade the former Lewisboro Elementary School, chiefly to create a prekindergarten center.

A less expensive, more expansive approach outlined late last month by school officials would retain the pre-K conversion but move beyond simply providing those state-mandated facilities. Instead, the district would partner with third-party providers to offer broader early-childhood education: public-school pre-K for all eligible 4-year-olds and private preschool programs for toddlers aged 1 to 3 and for infants.

Families using the birth-to-3 services would pay the preschool’s fees unless the child qualifies for certain programs, like early intervention. “Families who sign up for KLSD Prekindergarten will not pay tuition, regardless of whether the program is located at the renovated Lewisboro Elementary School or at a community-partner location,” Lisa Herlihy, the assistant superintendent for business said in an email. “The district’s pre-K program will be paid for by state funding.”

Voters will go to the polls from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Oct. 20, making their choice via paper ballot at their local elementary school. In the weeks before the vote, information sessions are scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Lewisboro Library (Sept. 24) and Katonah Library (Sept. 29); for school board meetings at John Jay High School (starting at 7 p.m., Sept. 17 and Oct. 8); and for 7 p.m. via Zoom on Sept. 9 and Oct. 5. Visit https://www.klschools.org/o/klsd/page/les-path-forward to join the meeting.

October’s revised bond proposal will also come with a smaller price tag. By scuttling a proposed community center—decidedly unpopular with residents when they voted last spring—and finding other economies, district officials cut LES spending in the new bond to $19.945 million, a reduction of about 18 percent.

A refurbished LES, configured as KLSD’s Early Childhood Center, would respond to shifting community needs, Dr. Ray Blanch, KLSD’s superintendent, told the school board’s Aug. 27 meeting. “We certainly know there will be changes,” he said. “So, how do we make this a little more future proof? That facility will allow us to do that.”

In partnering with private preschool providers, KLSD will “provide some program oversight,” said Dr. Maggie Konrad, the district’s director of learning. Albany expects the professional staff, for example, to provide some educational leadership in working with community partners to define a best-fit curriculum.

“We really see early childhood education as different from elementary education,” Konrad said. “We want to ensure that we're providing those play-based, developmentally appropriate experiences, really getting them ready socially, emotionally, developmentally, behaviorally and with some of those early academic foundational skills, but all through joyful, play-based, exploratory inquiry experiences, guided by our professional early-learning teaching staff.” 

In two years, every school district in the state must make pre-K services available for all its eligible 4-year-olds. Though that mandate had been widely anticipated, it was not yet law when voters handed the LES bond its narrow, 1,433 to 1,411, defeat in May. Gov. Kathy Hochul had pressed the legislature to enact universal pre-K, and she signed it into law in June.

Defeat of the LES bond stunned KLSD leadership and prompted an intense summer search to learn why. Cost, not pre-K, residents told administrators, who then crafted the alternative proposal to be voted on next month.

“We have kept the course of where we want to go, but we’ve made some adjustments in our path to get there,” Blanch told the school board. The modifications include “thinking [about] not just the 4-year-olds but beyond.”

Those early years are seen as critical in a child’s development. “From birth till roughly 5 years old, brains grow by about 90 percent . . . the architecture is being woven,” Blanch said, citing Harvard research on early childhood education. The study found that a million neural connections could be developing every second.

“What's happening at that point in time,” Blanch continued,  is that “the environment, the experiences the children have, the play-based learning they have, [are] developing into those social skills, those early executive-functioning skills, those early skills to kind of manage relationships and connections and things like that.”

To provide foundational care and early development from birth, Blanch said, the district would engage with “multiple complementary partners,” none of them formally in place yet.

Representatives of two private preschool agencies—Carmelina Myers, executive director of the Country Children’s Center, with facilities in Katonah and South Salem, and Gail Porter and Jeannine DiBart, owners of Katonah Playcare—addressed the board’s meeting.

DiBart applauded the proposed partnership and cited a specific benefit. “The flow from preschool into elementary school is strengthened,” she said. “That is very exciting.”

The Children’s Center, Myers noted, already partners with KLSD to provide the limited pre-K now available. Today’s lottery finds seats for only about 50 KLSD youngsters, or less than half of all applicants. Universal pre-K will enroll all eligible 4-year-olds.