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Residents press East Hampton council over preschool cuts and communication failures
Summary
Multiple residents told the council they received late notices that Smart Start preschool seats were being cut; the school official acknowledged communication limits around referendum periods and said the district would work on outreach while funding and staffing uncertainties remain.
During the public-comment portion of the July 22 special meeting, several East Hampton residents urged clearer, earlier communication after families were notified that the Smart Start preschool would not run this year.
Shelby Galvin, a parent who said her child had been accepted to the program, told the council that families provided extensive private information during enrollment and deserved direct conversations about alternatives. "Why were families never given the opportunity to participate in the fee that was available when the other preschool classrooms in Memorial School have a tuition fee already?" she asked.
Hailey Guy said that a cited figure of $5.50 a month to preserve programs had stayed with her and framed the cuts as a loss of irreplaceable childhood opportunities: "Once these opportunities are gone, we cannot get them back."
A school official responded that the district had discussed potential reductions in prior communications and that a $97,000 Smart Start grant and an estimated $45,000 in sliding-scale tuition were part of the funding picture, but that sliding-scale revenue was not guaranteed. The official accepted that direct communications to affected families could have been better and pointed to legal constraints about referendum-period messaging that limit what municipal entities can send to residents.
The official said the district would explore better communitywide notification methods and linkages to ParentSquare for broader access, but cautioned that grant continuity and program start-up timelines complicate reopening or reinstating programs close to the school year.
Residents also raised related concerns about middle school athletics and elective-course cuts; council members and the school official acknowledged the emotional impact and the difficulty of reconciling service reductions with short timelines before the school year.
Next step: the Board of Education budget is on the Aug. 5 referendum; the superintendent and council asked to continue dialogue on communications and potential alternatives if the referendum returns a different result.
