'Too soon to panic': Funding sought for New London early childhood center
New London — Staring down another $2 million bill to keep the district's nationally-accredited B.P. Mission early childhood center running for another year, school board President Elaine Maynard-Adams said Thursday she's not too worried.
Yet.
'It's too soon to panic, but it would break my heart if we had to close this preschool program, which is not mandated for us to offer,' she said.
The funding issue revolves around the estimated $2.3 million the district says it will take to continue running preschool and other programming at the Early Childhood Center at B.P. Mission on Shaw Street. The expenditure is one of the big increases in Superintendent Cynthia Ritchie's $56 million 2025-26 budget proposal.
Maynard-Adams said she and Ritchie have had several conversations with state legislators and department leaders on possible funding relief options.
'That's included things like revamping early childhood program financing,' she said, noting Gov. Ned Lamont has suggested offering more state funding for preschools, but not until next year.
Lamont this month touted a proposal to deposit a portion of the state's anticipated surpluses over the next several years into a new 'Universal Preschool Endowment' fund. The endowment would be seeded by $300 million from the 2024-2025 surplus, and in the following years any unappropriated surpluses from the state's general fund will continue to be transferred into it.
Lamont said the endowment would make preschool available for free to families earning up to $100,000 per year and create 20,000 new preschool slots by 2032.
Seeking sustainable funding
The center got an 11th-hour reprieve last year after state lawmakers, including state Sen. Martha Marx, D-New London, lobbied for the use of $2 million in federal COVID-19 relief monies to close the funding gap.
'But we knew that just a Band-Aid and not a long-term answer,' Marx said on Thursday. 'That is one of my main priorities, to try and find more state funding to keep B.P. open. There's a lot of people at the table talking about this and I haven't given up.'
The city and school district in the 2021-22 school year used $1.5 million in federal coronavirus relief funding to buy the B.P. Learned Mission building and transform it into a space for early childhood classes during the day and community programming at night.
The center's magnet preschool program recently earned national accreditation through the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Such recognitions are based on criteria that grades curriculum, teacher approaches, community relationships and student progress.
The center currently has 80 pre-K students with a waiting list of about another 80 families. As a magnet school, the center receives approximately $9,200 in state grant money for each of the seven out-of-district students it enrolls, but nothing for its 73 students from New London.
'The center offers high-quality educational programming, taught by certified teachers and professional staff, and is free of charge for families,' Ritchie said in a Thursday email. 'Nutritious meals (breakfast and lunch) are served daily. Transportation is also provided.'
Maynard-Adams said there have also been expansion conversations.
'If we had more space we could enroll more students and that means more state resources,' Maynard-Adams said. 'We've also had conversations about transitioning 4-year-old students into elementary school classrooms to free-up space at B.P.'
Maynard-Adams said preschool programming has been shown to pay big student dividends, especially for those with special needs.
'Those students who take part in early childhood classes outperform those who don't,' she said. 'And it also enables those students with language or speech issues to get help early on and help quickly address those issues.'
Maynard-Adams, who noted the state legislature's budget is still being crafted, said she's not sure the district budget can bear the cost of the center alone.
'I don't know if we can justify that cost — one that's not mandated — at the expense of something else,' she said.
The center is accepting enrollment applications.
j.penney@theday.com
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