Vote YES for the Lexington Children's Place preschool

Lexington voters are being asked to approve funding a new Lexington Children's place building - at a maximum cost of $76 per year for a median value household ($831,000). Read on to understand more about the program, it's needs, and the options that were considered prior to the current proposal being put forward.

The Lexington Children's Place preschool is mandated by state law 603CMR28 "to ensure that eligible Massachusetts students receive special education services designed to develop the student's individual educational potential in the least restrictive environment in accordance with applicable state and federal law." The school provides integrated preschool programming for children with and without special need. The children with special needs can receive occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and classroom instruction using the Tools of the Mind Curriculum. This curriculum is researched based and is designed to increase children’s attention and executive function skills. The program also provides stand alone services to children who need additional help but do not qualify for the preschool program.

The children with special needs who do attend the preschool (all Lexington residents) have a wide range of needs, from developmental delays to autism spectrum disorders, physical disabilities, intellectual impairment, and sensory impairment. In addition to the special needs students, an equal number of "typically developing" students attend the school (paying tuition comparable to private preschools across town). This is a truly excellent program that helps prepare children to enter the mainstream elementary schools, with the early intervention leading to much better long term outcomes for the children who attend, and lower costs in the long term for the school district (more children in general education rather than private programs).
The preschool opened in 1991, using one classroom at Lexington High School. Since then, the program has grown - and been moved around, to 14 different spaces. At the moment, the school is in four classrooms at new Harrington and two at old Harrington. This is now the maximum amount of space that can be used by the program at old Harrington without triggering the need for a full building renovation.

The old Harrington was decommissioned as a school in 2005. It has no sprinkler system which is of great concern when you have very small children, who are not yet independent, in the space. Unlike the rooms in the new Harrington, and most kindergarten classrooms across the district, there are no in-room bathrooms, meaning every time a child needs to use the toilet, a teacher has to leave the class to go with them. There is asbestos in the building - encapsulated, yes, but present. Aside from the negatives of the old Harrington building, it is also far from ideal to have the preschool split across two locations. Staff and therapists waste time travelling between the two buildings. Best attempts are made to avoid children traversing the 600 feet, but it is impossible to do so all the time, resulting in safety concerns as they cross two parking lots.
A large number of options to allow the preschool to be in a single, appropriately sized, permanent space, were considered over the last two years. Five options for the preschool were examined in this presentation:

• adding to new Harrington
• renovating old Harrington
• a free standing building on the Harrington site
• renovating the Armenian Sister’s school on the Pelham property
• free standing building on a parcel on Laconia road)

Other options considered during the planning process included:

• short-term lease of another preschool facility at the Minuteman high school - rejected due to the short-term nature and uncertain future
• parcel of land across from the Lexington high school (inadequate parking and other site considerations)
• incorporation into the new Hastings school (inadequate parking, play areas, and inability to increase elementary capacity)
• Liberty Mutual building (need for swing space for fire and police; better suited for central offices)

Ultimately, after numerous discussions at school committee, facilities, Permanent Building Committee, the finance committees, and Board of Selectmen meetings, along with Budget Summits, building a new, standalone structure on the Pelham Rd. site was determined to be the optimal solution.

There are myriad positive reasons for this site selection. It frees four classrooms and three offices in the new Harrington building, to allow for further growth at the Harrington elementary school. It alleviates site congestion at Harrington which currently has a severe parking shortage. There is space for future expansion of the preschool if necessary (not possible at many of the other suggested locations), and also still space on the site for a possible future community center expansion, or another office structure. There is adequate parking, which can be used by the community center after school hours. There are multiple drop off/pickup locations alleviating congestion during those times. The site is centrally located, important for a town-wide service. There is adequate space for an appropriate playground. Finally, construction will not displace students or cause further congestion at the Harrington site.

Some have suggested that this Pelham site would be better used as a site for a future seventh elementary school. That possibility was investigated during the exhaustive examination of options for the site and determined not to be feasible. There would not be sufficient space for even a 12-section elementary school, parking, and play space, let alone a 24-section school. There were serious traffic concerns due to the lack of site lines at the Pelham / Mass Ave intersection and the volume of traffic and buses that an elementary school would entail. Another suggestion is that the site would be best used for administrative offices. Unlike siting for a school, there are multiple possibilities across town for office space; therefore reserving this parcel for office space seemed unwise. As stated, there is still room remaining on the site with the location selected for the preschool for a future expansion of the community center or a small office building if needed in the future.
The claim has also been made that spending money on the preschool now without a firm plan for other building projects (such as a not-yet-needed seventh elementary school, and a renovation/rebuild of the high school) is rash and reckless. What is truly ill-advised, however, is not moving forward with this preschool project now. The project will only get more expensive if we delay, unless there is a serious drop in school enrollment which would allow the preschool to take more space at new Harrington, which is unlikely given the number of new units being built across town. More importantly, the current situation, with preschool students in a building in which "future [elementary] parents will balk at having their young children placed in that dated facility" is untenable.

Opponents of this plan have not offered any alternate solution for where the preschool should go, because there isn't one. And if enrollment continues to grow as it has, the result will be sending preschool children with special needs to out-of-district programs at the cost of $50-100k per year per child plus transportation.

Please help do the right thing for this program, as we have each time we've been asked in the past. Vote YES on Monday December 4th.