Community Pre-K Still Seeks New Home

     The Sandwich Community School’s pre-kindergarten services will not be moving into the Henry T. Wing School any time soon, but all-day kindergarten classes just might.
     At a school committee workshop held Wednesday evening devoted to issues facing the community school, Community School Director James J. Lehane revealed that he had scrapped plans for an engineering study at the Wing school that would have determined whether there was room in the building for his classroom programs.
     The reason for the change in plans, he said, was because former superintendent Nancy E. Young had suggested just prior to her resignation that the district pursue all-day kindergarten.
     This is the latest in a series of detours for Mr. Lehane, who has been searching for an alternative to the outdated community school building located outside Wing.
     Back in January, the school committee had unanimously voiced its support for Mr. Lehane’s original proposal to construct a new modular building on the grounds of the Oak Ridge School.
     After that idea was squashed due to the limitations of the building’s outdated wastewater treatment plant, Mr. Lehane proposed building an entirely new building at the corner of Morse Road.
     Dr. Young shot that plan down, urging Mr. Lehane to consider the possibility of adding on to the Wing school. She said this would be far less expensive than building a new one.
     From that directive, a discussion about the possibility of moving the school for early learning into the Wing school evolved.
     At the end of the school year, Mr. Lehane and Wing School Principal Matthew J. Bridges together announced the proposal to the school committee, and received the blessing of the committee to use community school funds to conduct an engineering study of the building.
     Shortly after that meeting, however, Mr. Lehane said he was told by Dr. Young to find another location, as any spare space in the Wing school would be better used for all-day kindergarten classes.
     The next step, Mr. Lehane said, was to wait. “Now we’re going to look at the concept of all-day kindergarten.” 
     Mr. Lehane said that he still likes the idea of putting a new building at the corner of Morse Road, and would likely pursue constructing a modular building on that location once the fate of all-day kindergarten in Sandwich is determined.
     He told the school committee that a request for a proposal for a building on Morse Road has already been prepared.
     As for how his operation would be affected by the district’s adding full-day kindergarten, Mr. Lehane said the Community School would likely drop its kindergarten services and expand its other offerings.
     “From a practical point of view, I may no longer provide kindergarten, but I may offer other programs in its place,” he said.
     Interim Superintendent Mary Ellen Johnson said that according to a survey of parents conducted in June, there is interest for all-day kindergarten in the district.
     When asked by school committee Chairman Robert J. Guerin whether she had considered the possibility of offering all-day kindergarten classes at all three of the district’s K-8 schools, Dr. Johnson replied she would need to better examine the capacity of the schools before she made a decision.
     “We would really need to walk the schools, look at enrollment, and see what’s there,” she said.
     The workshop itself did not result in any concrete plans for all-day kindergarten. The committee members did agree to return to the issue at another workshop to be held on September 10.
     Among the likely topics of discussion at that workshop are how much the program would cost, and whether the district would offer all-day kindergarten at cost or for profit.