Nancy On Norwalk

Steven Colarossi

Despite assurances to the contrary, and notwithstanding that families have already entered into contracts for the Brookside Preschool Program for the 2017-18 school year, Superintendent Steven Adamowski has, once again, unilaterally offered the Brookside classrooms to a consortium (known as “ELLI”) which includes a for-profit partner.  This decision is being made despite the costs of the privatized program far exceeding the net costs of the Brookside program which is operated by the District and staffed by fully-certified teachers holding masters’ degrees.  Now, rather than being honest with the families who will be negatively affected when their children’s preschool program is cancelled, the Superintendent has decided, instead, to include the cost of the Brookside program on his “cut-list” under the guise of needing to save its net cost of $42,000.  Of course, the fact that replacing the Brookside program with the costlier ELLI program will require far more funding than is being saved is an inconvenient truth the Superintendent and his minions on the Board of Education must hope taxpayers will overlook.  Given that the Board of Education’s Finance Committee approved the elimination of the Brookside program without any debate or discussion as to its impact on the students already registered for it, one can only conclude that providing a financial boom to the politically-connected leaders of the ELLI consortium is far more important than budgetary transparency or fiscal responsibility. Continue reading Opinion: There are better ways to save money than to cut Brookside preschool