Pocono Record: Brodheadsville preschool to close due to state budget impasse
By Lynn Ondrusek
Pocono Record Writer
Posted Oct. 22, 2015
Friday marks 115 days that Pennsylvania has been without a budget, and one local preschool is feeling the pinch.
It’s more than a pinch, actually.
The Growing Place’s Pre-K Counts program in Brodheadsville will be shutting its doors at the end of next week if a budget isn’t in place, said Executive Director Lisa Eick.
The state-funded program has not been getting the money it needs because of the budget impasse in Harrisburg. Eick said The Growing Place has been funding the program on its own — $40,000 in staff salary alone, so far, plus expenses for the program and nutrition service — since it opened for the school year in August.
“We can only fund it for so long on the backs of ourselves,” she said Thursday afternoon, adding that 68 students and seven employees will be affected by the closing.
Parents were sent home with letters Thursday explaining the situation. Eick said they will send the students home with a lot of activities to do during the break. They are telling the students the closing is a fall break.
“We really don’t want the kids to become pawns in the game,” she said. “We told the children that this is an adult issue.”
Eick said the budget impasse went 100 days in 2007. She thought there was “no way” it would go as long this year.
Read the full article here.
