Transitional Kindergarten?

Preschool after hours: Quite now but not for long!

Prior to this school year, we have accommodated 'young five year old' students in our preschool program. At parent request, we were able to allow those families the option of a second year of preschool if they [parents] thought they weren't quite ready for kindergarten. It wasn't really an ideal situation because we had to charge these families tuition and program isn't really designed that way. Nevertheless, we had the room so it really didn't make much sense to have open slots going unfilled if someone wanted to make use of the opening. The caveat of course is that a five year old can't take the place of a four year old, which is where we found ourselves at the beginning of this school year.

Our preschool program has a limit of 40 students, which is based largely on staffing limitations. At the same time, because our preschool program is fully inclusive a few slots need to be held in reserve to accommodate qualifying students that emerge throughout the course of the school year. Some children become eligible at age 3, and once those students become eligible we have to serve them. This, factored with enrollment growth has created a pressure point in our early childhood program. The preschool program is now completely full, and those families with 'young five year old's' were faced with a choice: kindergarten or a private provider. Luckily our community has good options for families so everyone was able to find a soft landing spot. But in reality we are to the point where we need to consider the structure of our comprehensive early childhood program. 

Last spring the early childhood faculty approached me about implementing a program that would be designed specifically to fill this gap. Often referred to as transitional or pre-kindergarten programs, they are becoming more popular around the state. While it wasn't feasible to consider implementing a program like this on such short notice, it is being studied this year and could be a possibility for the 2022-2023 school year. 

There are caveats of course. For starters, in essence what we would be doing is opening a 4th section of kindergarten. Even though in practice it would function as a transitional kindergarten program, those students would be classified as kindergarten students for state reporting purposes. In our preliminary discussions with the DE, they aren't all that interested in the transitional kindergarten concept. Nevertheless at the end of the day this does become a local issue. The other, perhaps more pertinent unknown is having enough students to actually make a transitional kindergarten fiscally responsible and feasible. 

To answer this question, it is wise to look at our enrollment trajectory and trendline data. Our kindergarten enrollment is projected using a five year rolling average of the past five years. Based on this estimate, kindergarten classes are projected to be 57 over the next five years. However, this year we have 64 and when correcting for those who were expected to attend and then later chose a different option, our kindergarten class would have been over 70 students. At 72, we could comfortably have four sections of kindergarten at 18 a piece, with one of which being a transitional program. Naturally though we don't anticipate an even distribution across the programs, but this makes the math simple.

As I look at enrollment trends that include both residential enrollment growth and open enrollment it is entirely possible that my projections are understated. By how much remains an open question. While today's post focused on the mechanics and fiscal side of the issue, we will also be discussing the programmatic aspects of a transitional kindergarten soon. Nevertheless, we will begin the process of examining our early childhood program in the coming weeks. I look forward to the discussion, not only with our professional teaching staff but with families who might be impacted and have an interest in this program. If you are interested in being involved in this work, please reach out!