COVID Grant
Watertown Plans to Start Universal PreK With COVID Relief Grant
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Watertown School officials plan to use some of the money from the federal COVID school assistance grant to offer full-day PreK classes to more children in the City. The Watertown Public Schools will receive more than $2.86 million from the third round of the federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) grant, and Superintendent Dede Galdston told the School Committee she wants to use $370,000 of the funds to start the effort to create universal PreK. Other uses for the funds include expanding extended day and summer programs, credit recovery summer classes to help prevent dropouts, salaries for two assistant principals, and to create a teachers-in-residence program. The ESSER funds would be used to move the district toward universal PreK, Galdston said. The money would be used to pay for half the salary of PreK teachers and instructional assistants in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget.