R-2 approves preschool expansion

By Roxie Murphy, Staff Writer
Posted 3/1/23

The board of education welcomed Gasconade County R-2 preschoolers on Feb. 21 to the monthly board meeting where they approved 6-0 Assistant Superintendent Dr. Staci Johnson’s request to add …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

R-2 approves preschool expansion

Posted

The board of education welcomed Gasconade County R-2 preschoolers on Feb. 21 to the monthly board meeting where they approved 6-0 Assistant Superintendent Dr. Staci Johnson’s request to add four employees for additional classrooms at both elementry schools to accommodate new enrollees.

“For several months we have been in the board room discussing our preschool program, how successful it has been, and what we want it to look like for the future,” Johnson began. “I thought it was important to bring some of our young ones here to talk about or show you at least what they really, really love about preschool.”

Along the wall, students created posters about what they love most about preschool.

Johnson has been advocating to expand the preschool curriculum and add classes, possibly at parental expense, in order to serve more families in the community. The district requested all families with children ages 3-5-years-old particpate in the February preschool assessment days to evaluate the need. Johnson put the numbers in persepective with past data.

“As we were looking through this, a lot of the data that we found showed how successful (the program) has been over the years,” Johnson said. “Over 90 percent of kids that come out of this program are ready to read when they get to kindergarten. For the first three years in their education they score higher in math by three points, reading by five points and behavior by over 10 points.”

The numbers say a lot about the importance of early learning at Gerald and Owensville elementary schools. Both elementary teachers were present to thank the board for their support. The students each drew a picture of their favorite things about preschool to give to a board member.

A chorus of student voices and board member “thank yous” followed. The presentation ended with the students singing the ABC song.

The board skipped ahead on the agenda to discuss the expansion of the program, beginning with more staff.

“We’ve been working for several months, looking at the data and talking about what it would look like to offer more expansive preschool to our community,” Johnson said. “What we are recomending, we still have more conversations to look at as far as what a pricing model might look like, but at this point, what we are asking for the board to consider is an increase in the preschool capacity by hiring an additional early childhood teacher at Owensville, one at Gerrald and two additional paraprophessionals in order to fill another classroom.”

The district screened 106 students in February during preschool enrollment.

“That would allow us to place all of the students that we screened and not have a waiting list for the 2023-24 school year,” Johnson finished.

Board Persident Glenn Ely said he wanted to draw out two points of the discussion.

“One, the data-based impact of the decisions and the amazing impact the teachers and parents get from the commitment moving those kids forward,” Ely said. “It is a win, win, win on moving those kids forward and leanring and growth.”

Ely said they had a discussion about the perschool expansion as part of the bond project and he wanted to provide some clarity to the board.

“Part of the funding for the two full-time teachers, because of the decreased population in the middle school, we were able to distribute the funds to support (the classroom expansion) and we need two paras in order to support the teachers as well,” he said. “The idea is that we can provide this option at no tuition, which is really important that we want the maximum number of participants because of the impact on those young learners. The growth of that is based on the needs and scores and who can be eligible.”

Ely said they have 100 possible students. The current free option would only allow them to accept around 40 students based on needs and scores.

The board approved the creation of four additional students in order to expand the preschool capacity in the 2023-24 school year with a 6-0 vote.