Yonkers Schools To State: We Need Funding For Pre-K

YONKERS, N.Y. – Finding the money to reinstate the full-day pre-kindergarten program in Yonkers is imperative to the futures of district students, Superintendent Bernard Pierorazio said this week.

Yonkers students who attended a pre-kindergarten program score better on state exams, graduate at a higher rate and are in school more often than their peers who did not, a district study shows.

Pierorazio presented Yonkers’ findings, compiled over the course of 12 years, to state officials earlier this month and again this week at a Yonkers Board of Education meeting.

“It’s going to make an impact on this district in the future,” he said. “We really need to find some way to restore funding to allow pre-kindergarten to exist in a full-time basis.”

Last year, with funds drying up and options limited, the district was forced to cut its full-day, pre-k program to a half day. This year, more than 2,100 students enrolled in the program, but with seats only available for around 1,500, nearly 600 students were shut out of pre-k, Pierorazio said.  

What’s more, the superintendent said, is the state has left more than $40 million on the table for early education, money it had budgeted for programs around the state but went unused.

“We are forced to provide a half-day program when there is money in Albany,” Pierorazio said.

The superintendent took his message to the state capitol earlier this month, sharing Yonkers' findings with the state’s Department of Education Reform Commission.  As the group looks for ways to address educational goals, it is imperative especially in a large urban district, to find a way to fund full-day pre-k programs, Pierorazio told them.

“Full-day prekindergarten is a vital component to raising academic standards and narrowing the achievement gap,” he told the commission.

And the superintendent said he has the stats to prove it.

In 2008, the most recent data available, 64 percent of Yonkers students in grades three through eight who had attended the district’s full-day pre-k program reached proficiency levels on the state’s English and language arts exam, the study shows.

Of the students who had not attended the pre-k program, he said 48 percent reached a proficiency rate, according to the study.

The study also showed that in math, there were similar discrepancies: 72 percent of former pre-k attendees reached proficiency, 13 percent more than their peers who did not attend the program.

Gaps in graduation rates yielded much of the same. In 2007, 92 percent of former pre-k students graduated, 13 percent more than those who did not the program, according to the data. A year later, the study shows that 96 percent of students who attended the early childhood education program graduated, compared to 81 percent who did not.

“Overall it presents a distinct advantage,” Pieorazio said. “Students are more likely to achieve proficiency and more likely to graduate.”

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