The Wellesley School Committee during its Feb. 11 meeting (see Wellesley Media recording) heard an update from the Administration on the work of the Future of Preschool Task Force. The group is made up of 15+ community members and Wellesley Public Schools staff members, including Preschool at Wellesley Schools (P.A.W.S.) parents and educators.

P.A.W.S. is an integrated preschool that serves students ages 3-5. About half of P.A.W.S. students have an Individualized Education Program (IEP). Each class has up to 15 students, seven of whom have IEPs, and eight who do not. Teachers are all special educators, and most are certified in early childhood education.

Yearly tuition rates at P.A.W.S. for SY 2024-25 range from $4,500 for a four-day/week, morning-only program (12 hours/week) up to $8,700 for a five-day/week program (23 hours/week). The P.A.W.S. school year begins and ends on the WPS calendar.

P.A.W.S., since 2006 located behind Fiske Elementary School—both on Hastings Street—has for years been bursting at the seams. The 6-classroom modular building holds full classrooms; three satellite classrooms operate at Sprague Elementary School.

Supt. David Lussier in assembling the Task Force said its major focus is to find out what Wellesley wants out of a preschool program. “We don’t want to build a facility that won’t meet our needs going forward, as has happened to some communities that have built buildings they’ve already outgrown. We don’t want that to happen. Before we think about bringing forward a request for a new building it’s critical that we’re centered on what we want the program to look like,” he said.

The Task Force will develop multiple options to present to the School Committee, including a timeline and implementation plan, as well as estimated costs for each option.

How will the Task Force figure out what Wellesley wants for its youngest learners? Enter the focus groups. Over the past two months, 55 attendees over six focus groups were grilled on what they believed was the purpose of public preschool. Topics covered included curriculum, scheduling, transportation, tuition, the physical plant, and preschool investment in context of other town needs. Parents of P.A.W.S. students, community members, preschool and town leaders, and P.A.W.S. and kindergarten staff dug deep and shared their philosophical and practical feelings on the matter.

Kristin Stacy, Interim Director of Early Childhood, P.A.W.S. Preschool, said the next steps will be to analyze the information gleaned from the focus groups and develop a community survey. Dr. Kat Bernklow, Director of Student Services, will craft the survey “to try to get more of what we think is important to the community, based upon the qualitative data, and then analyze, summarize, and interpret all of the findings,” she said.

The Task Force will present to the School Committee, tentatively scheduled for June before the end of the school year,  a report that will include potential preschool models, relative costs, and top priorities.

Sharon Gray, WPS Director of Communications and Community Engagement, said what came up frequently across all the focus groups was a desire to “balance academic development with play and social skills” as well as a desire for more options when it comes to scheduling, and lots of interest for a sliding tuition scale for families who have financial difficulties accessing preschool.

Lussier said:. “We’ve heard a growing understanding of how important access to high-quality preschool is, to building a common foundation for all kids to come to school with a level of readiness. And we definitely see a variability of who comes to school and who has had that kind of access, and we know the kind of barriers that exist for families, whether it’s cost, transportation, hours. And so there’s a greater movement in Massachusetts, I think, to really look at preschool as not just sort of nice to have but as more of a foundational activity for school districts.”

What’s next, spring 2025

• Community-wide survey to be distributed
• Analyze survey results
• Task Force to finalize recommendations
• June 10 (tentative date)—Future of Preschool Task Force will present recommendations to School Committee

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