A question answered, and asked again

The preschool has been asked to explain itself for five years. It has explained itself for five years. The answer is on the record, and the data still being demanded is data federal law forbids the school to hand over.

In November 2025 the First Selectman came to the Board of Education with a request for preschool data: four spreadsheets, broken out ^[1].

The superintendent refused, on the record, and explained why. Some of what was being asked for was student information protected by federal privacy law: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ^[2], which reaches not only names but any information that would let a reasonable person in the school community identify a particular child ^[3], and the confidentiality provisions of the special-education law ^[4]. Some of it was employee information protected under the school’s collective bargaining agreements ^[5] ^[6] and Connecticut’s own freedom of information statute, which lets an employee object to disclosure ^[7]. Some of it, being health information, is not the town’s business under any reading ^[8] ^[9]. And in a preschool of this size, she pointed out, a line-item breakdown of costs is not an abstraction. There are a handful of children. A one-on-one aide’s salary, itemized, identifies the child that aide is assigned to ^[10].

That is not a school hiding something. That is a school following a statute.

The pressing did not begin in November and it is not only his. In February 2026 he pressed the preschool at the Board of Education, and the superintendent rebutted the cost claim on the spot ^[11]. At the joint meeting of the finance and selectmen’s boards later that month he raised the cost of out-of-town students ^[12]. Other instances, and it matters to be accurate about this, are not him at all: members of the finance and education boards have carried much of the transparency pressing in their own meetings ^[13]. The subject of this section is the First Selectman and the members aligned with him, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of error that hands the whole argument away.

Now the part that ought to end this.

The questions being asked have answers, and the answers are on the public record, and they have been for five years.

In February 2021 the school laid the whole thing out for the Board of Finance: why out-of-town children are admitted at all (the state grant that funds the program requires an income mix), what they pay, and what the special-education children pay, which is nothing, because the law says so ^[14]. In March 2022 the superintendent told the same board that the preschool pays for itself between the tuition and the grants ^[15]. In January 2024 she explained the cost structure again: the program sits outside the general fund, funded by school readiness money, Smart Start money, and tuition ^[16]. In January 2026 she explained it again ^[17]. In March 2026 she explained it again, to the finance board, with the tuition basis ^[18]. The numbers are printed in the board’s own packet ^[19].

And on the out-of-town children specifically, the logic is not complicated. A preschool room the school is running anyway has empty seats in it. An out-of-towner cannot be placed in Andover for special education at Andover’s expense, and pays full price ^[20a]^[20b]. Filling an empty seat at full tuition brings money in ^[17].

Be careful with that, because there is a version of it that is not true. Asked in 2021 whether taking in a large number of out-of-town children would make money, the school said the opposite: it would hurt, because once you have to open another classroom the revenue stops covering it ^[14]. The preschool does not profit from out-of-town students. It fills seats that would otherwise sit empty. That is the claim, and it is the only one this article makes.

A fair question deserves a real answer. The answer has been given, in public, at meeting after meeting, since 2021.

The question keeps being asked as though it never was.

A question answered, and asked again

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