Sherri Killins Stewart.
A controversial $1,500-a-day consulting contract was pulled from consideration before the school board had a chance to give it an up-or-down vote.
School officials had proposed bringing back consultant Sherri Killins Stewart, the former early childhood education commissioner in Massachusetts, for a second year to continue helping administrators as they try to unify New Haven’s preschool offerings.
Board of Education members had planned to take a vote on renewing the $39,000 contract — about two-thirds of the cost of last year’s agreement — at Monday night’s meeting at Celentano School. But the proposal was withdrawn late last week.
Superintendent Carol Birks did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Monday morning about why the renewal wouldn’t be presented to the board and what the early childhood team might do with the money instead.
In a Monday morning email, Killins said that she was proud of the work she did for the district last school year. She stepped in at a time when the district’s short-staffed early childhood team nearly lost all of its Head Start funding.
“I am happy the Board of Education feels the new staff are ready to lead the early childhood work and I do not want to be a distraction from focusing on the needs of young children,” Killins wrote. “I am confident that my experience has been of value to [last school year’s] early childhood leadership team.”
“I am committed to the children and families of New Haven first and foremost,” she added. “My focus is on ensuring that young children and their families get access to high quality early learning opportunities and not the politics of the City of New Haven.”
Within the last few months, the district has built out its early childhood team.
In addition to Denise Duclos and Mary Derwin, two administrators in charge of School Readiness programs, Superintendent Birks hired Elizabeth Gaffney as director of Head Start and Pamela Augustine-Jefferson as director of early learning programs.
They’ve convinced the federal government to continue providing its $5.7 million annual funding for Head Start and have started to experiment with a play-based curriculum for the early grades.