Officials: Union, city making progress on issues in Springfield's pre-K program

Date: 3/8/2023

SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Education Association (SEA), which represents the city’s teachers, is now meeting regularly with Superintendent Daniel Warwick to address issues in the city’s pre-K program, according to school administration officials.

In the December 2022 newsletter of the SEA, problems were cited that included insufficient staffing and what was described as unsafe conditions.

The newsletter read, “This year the district opened up at least one preschool classroom in every building. In addition to enrollment in every building, another pre-K school was opened and they offered pre-K to all three and four-year-old children in Springfield. This expansion has been painful for pre-K educators, students, and their parents. Those of you in elementary schools may have seen the aftermath of this quick expansion.

“With one week notice over 75 of the 100 pre-K teachers for whom we have email addresses showed up at a meeting called by the SEA. They spoke of:

"Unsafe Conditions

• Staff and students being injured by other students,
• Educators working alone with up to 20 students or alone in a LINKS classroom.
• Not enough paraeducators and paraeducators being pulled all the time.
• Inappropriate toileting and diapering facilities for small children.

"Unrealistic Expectations

• Class sizes are too big, some classrooms are too small.
• 3, 4, and 5-year-olds together for a full school day is unmanageable — the 3-year-old children have never been in school and educators need to carry out a curriculum that is not developmentally appropriate for 3-year-old toddlers to get the older students ready for kindergarten.
• Toileting and diapering take up a large part of the day given the number of students who are not toilet trained.
• The day is too long for some students but there is not a half-day option.
• The educators in classrooms that go until 3:30 p.m. have no time to clean up their classroom at the end of the day and plan with their para for the following day (historically, pre-K was dismissed at 2:30 p.m. to allow for this time).

“On Dec. 8 over 100 pre-K educators attended a meeting with the district to explain, from their perspective, the issues facing pre-K educators this year. We asked for two follow-up actions:

• A meeting in early January to hear back from the district team, what they are planning as of now to improve the pre-K program,
• Include a small group of pre-K educators in the district’s planning moving forward to ensure that an on-the-ground, in-the classroom perspective will always be present in planning meetings.”

SEA President Tracy Little-Sasanecki told Reminder Publishing that the union’s representative to this discussion about the problem has been a positive collaboration which has brought forth immediate changes and additional hires.

Warwick said, “The SEA made their concerns known to administration back in December [2022], regarding preschool conditions. When we met with the SEA to learn more, we discovered that staffing was at the root of the issues and we were able to increase pre-K staffing, which has a tremendous positive impact on the issues that had been raised.”