KLSD voters give green light to Pre-K center at Lewisboro Elementary

CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - Given a second chance, voters on Tuesday approved plans to turn long-closed Lewisboro Elementary School into a center for universal prekindergarten services.

The Katonah Lewisboro School District superintendent, Ray Blanch, said immediately after the Oct. 20 vote that he was "thankful, obviously, for the entire school district." for residents’ Oct. 20 reversal of a May 19 bond defeat.

By a 1,586 to 1,275 count on Tuesday, residents approved borrowing almost $20 million for the LES conversion. Five months earlier, voters defeated a more-expensive LES plan, 1,433 to 1,411. 

Tuesday night’s results, early and unofficial, will almost certainly change as absentee ballots and other votes are counted, District Clerk Kimberly Monzon said, but not by enough to affect the outcome.

The 10-point margin of victory, a landslide by some measures, reversed the razor-thin rebuff of five months ago. That defeat, recorded on May 19, came before universal pre-K (UPK) became state law. Only days after KLSD voted down the LES UPK center, the state legislature decreed that every 4-year-old will be entitled, effective September 2028, to a seat in either a public or private school’s classroom.

Whether it was that mandate, the smaller price tag, the district’s full-throated marketing blitz or something else is anybody’s guess. It’s likely the result combined some of each.

Votes are compiled from polling places in each of KLSD’s three elementary schools. Here’s how residents voted, according to early, unofficial Oct. 20 tallies on the top line and official May 19 counts on the lower line.

Katonah Elementary School

Oct. 20 result:  Yes, 467 / No, 269

May 19 result:  Yes, 461 / No, 328

Increase Miller Elementary School

Oct. 20 result:  Yes, 699 / No, 496

May 19 result:  Yes, 602 / No, 577

Meadow Pond Elementary School

Oct. 20 result:  Yes, 420 / No, 510

May 19 result:  Yes, 348 / No, 528

Katonah-Lewisboro School District Total

Oct. 20 result:  Yes, 1,586 / No, 1,275

May 19 result:  Yes, 1,411 / No, 1,433

Universal prekindergarten’s 2028 arrival will supplant KLSD’s current lottery approach to determining which applicants—only about one in four—can enroll in a pre-K class. For now, that’s the province of private preschool services like the Country Children's Center (CCC) in South Salem.

KLSD plans partnerships with CCC and other providers—Katonah is expected to have two of them—to deliver pre-K services. They’ll hire the teachers while district administrators will oversee curriculum and pass along the state’s $10,000 per child reimbursement.

But the cost of providing UPK-compliant facilities—classrooms, rest rooms, play areas—falls to the district. Voters in May effectively denied permission to borrow the money to pay for the LES conversion.

Stung by May’s defeat, KLSD officials sought to learn why, soliciting feedback through a survey and focus groups over the summer. In the fall, using local libraries, school board meetings and Zoom’s cyberspace stage, they fielded residents’ questions and heard their reaction to the district’s new, scaled-back answer.

Cost, the issue that doomed the original, $24.5 million UPK bond question, remained an abiding concern even after an 18 percent reduction in the price tag. Surely, taxpayers seemed to say, there’s a less expensive way to meet the state’s mandate.

Blanch has said that turning the unused LES building into an Early Childhood Center gave KLSD an option other districts don’t enjoy. “We have a very unique situation,” he said, “where we have an asset in place now that just does not exist in other communities.”

But the asset must meet strict state Education Department standards. Moving 4-year-olds into school facilities built long ago for older students requires more than removing padlocks from the doors of dusty, unused classrooms. Counter-intuitively, the square footage required for these smallest students must be greater than what’s allotted for K-12 classrooms. SED also requires toilet facilities to be in the classroom or immediately accessible from it. And schools must either install lower (11-inch high) sinks and toilets or retrofit legacy ones to accommodate the smaller youngsters.

South Salem’s LES opened in 1940 and has not served students since its controversial closing in 2014. Lewisboro leased LES space for some town offices, but maintenance costs outran any KLSD revenue gains from the rent. A school board committee, charged with investigating options for the building, determined that demolishing it would be more expensive than refurbishing the structure.