The pending state budget cuts may hit school districts and families in a variety of ways, and that includes parents of preschoolers in the Gates Chili district.
A letter went out on Thursday to families trying to get their kids into Universal pre-K, letting them know that a reduction in state funding will force the district to provide six, rather than eight, full-day pre-kindergarten sections.
That news hits Allison Rittler hard. Her four-year-old daughter was about to transfer into the Gates Chili pre-K program from another program, and now she says she will find out within the next few days whether her daughter can even get into Gates Chili.
“Right now it’s tense and if it’s not her, if she can still go, it’s going to be somebody else’s kid and that just makes me angry; it’s not fair," Rittler said.
Rittler says she is mainly focusing her anger on the federal government for not providing states with the aid they would need to keep these education cuts from happening.
“That’s their job…every kid should have the opportunity to have an education, every kid, no matter where you live, you’re in the United States, that’s their job,” Rittler said.
Iva Petrosino, a spokesperson for Gates Chili agrees that the timing is terrible, but says the school district was recently informed it will lose at least $180,000 in state aid to fund pre-K. She said, “This is the last thing we would ever want to do to our families and our students.”
Parents like Allison Rittler will learn by later Monday whether their kids can still get into the program.
CITY Editor David Andreatta contributed to this story. He can be reached at dandreatta@rochester-citynews.com.
