SAYREVILLE – The Sayreville School District has received more than $2.7 million in funding from the state to help provide for a free, full-day pre-Kindergarten program in the district.
The $2.7 million provided by the New Jersey Department of Education (DOE) to expand Sayreville’s pre-kindergarten program was announced in a Sept. 4 press release from the district’s state legislators, Senator Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex), Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex) and Assemblywoman Yvonne Lopez (D-Middlesex).
“This is a historic year for Sayreville,” the legislators said in the statement. “We know that early education for children provides them a resilient foundation for academic success, setting them up to flourish in school as young adults and throughout their careers. This is one of the best investments we can make as a community and as a state and we are grateful to everyone – the legislators, the governor [Phil Murphy] and the advocates – who have made this possible.
“We will continue to work tirelessly with our colleagues in the legislature, as well as the [Murphy] administration, in order to ensure that all of New Jersey’s children have the same opportunity for pre-K education and programming now being afforded to Sayreville,” they said.
According to administrators in the Sayreville School District, the full-day pre-Kindergarten program is scheduled to be implemented during the current 2019-20 school year on Oct. 1.
Following the announcement, Superintendent of Schools Richard Labbe said, “We were naturally thrilled to recently learn that we will be receiving additional state aid, which will eventually enable us to provide a free, full-day preschool education to all three- and four-year-old children in Sayreville.
“What makes the receipt of this very important additional aid that much more special is that we tried and failed last year to obtain it,” Labbe continued. “However, due to the dedication and meticulous attention to detail demonstrated by David Knaster, our director of Pupil-Special Services, Audrey Burns, our director of Early Childhood Education, and Grace Restivo, her secretary, when writing our application, we are now finally able to provide all our earliest learners in Sayreville with the cognitive, language, social and emotional foundation that they will need to achieve at the highest level possible later in our school-aged programs.
“That being said, it is important for the parents of all three- and four-year-old children in Sayreville to know that as part of our program plan that was submitted to and eventually accepted by the DOE, this year we will provide, free of charge, our current full- and half-day programs with the students who have already been enrolled and possibly more via the partnerships that we have established with private preschool organizations in Sayreville.
“In addition, while we recognize that the parents of our current preschool children and those of three- and four-year-old children not in our programs will have many questions, we also need them to understand that at this time, we are in the early stages of planning for our Oct. 1 start date. Hence, when it becomes available, Audrey Burns, our director of Early Childhood Education, will disseminate more information by posting it on our website.”
Information about the program will be found at sayrevillek12.net/departments/preschool_education_aid.
