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A greater diversity of early childhood education options could soon be out there to Roaring Fork School District parents.
The RFSD Board of Education heard district workers’ strategic plan to revamp early childhood education this coming fall, with plans to create full day, full week, and full 12 months options for working households, supply sliding scale tuition, prioritize skilled growth, and create a pipeline of early childhood education professionals.
Anna Cole, Roaring Fork School District’s chief of pupil and household providers, introduced to the board.
“Anticipating universal preschool, we felt like we needed to solidify our identity as an early childhood district. We’re anticipating as the ground underneath us shifts,” she advised the board.
The district employed a marketing consultant in fall 2021 to stroll the district by a stakeholder and neighborhood knowledgeable course of to choose a guiding query: “How might we ensure that all families have access to high quality, affordable, culturally and linguistically appropriate early childhood education that prepares students for kindergarten and beyond?”
Currently, the district has 5 early childhood facilities with the potential to serve a further 75 PreK college students and eight toddler college students. To achieve this, they would wish a minimum of 14 new suppliers. They at present serve 25 toddlers (ages 1 to three) and 193 PreK college students (ages 3 to five).
Four main factors of the strategic roadmap embrace accessibility, high quality, fairness and inclusion, and sustainability. When it involves accessibility, the district plans to supply sliding scale tuition in a pilot program primarily based on the employees housing sliding scale mannequin for district school and employees. This consists of assessing present funding sources and growing sources of philanthropic assist.
Cole stated the district intends to create full day, week and full 12 months options for working households by beginning with one or two pilot packages, testing different staffing fashions corresponding to staggered shifts, and doubtlessly leveraging volunteers to assist develop capability.
When it involves high quality, Cole stated the district would proceed to deal with attaining the very best potential Colorado Shines rankings for all packages. She stated the district plans to spend money on staffing {and professional} growth, in addition to improve ECE curricular and programmatic alignment throughout RFSD packages (PreK by second grade). Cole stated in addition they plan to create father or mother and caregiver education alternatives throughout the district and with neighborhood suppliers.
The strategic plan requires a strengthening of particular education and psychological well being assist, by skilled growth and leveraged assist out there by the Colorado Department of Health Services for ECE psychological well being assist. The plan additionally requires strengthening culturally responsive instructing and enhancing twin language instruction.
As for sustaining the early childhood education program, Cole stated the district plans to create new instructor pipelines by numerous methods. Ideas embrace providing scholarships for credentialing packages, creating fellowship/internship alternatives in partnership with native and regional organizations, create wage steps aligned with ranges of certification and education, present stipends for persevering with education, and construct connections with FFN networks to recruit new lecturers.
Next steps for the plan embrace constructing an ECE calendar that more intently aligns with the Ok-12 schedule, and constructing a simplified day by day calendar and simplified enrollment options with a lengthened “extended care” possibility. The district plans to construct and implement a centralized ECE tuition system and implement a staffing plan with the aim to open a minimum of one more preschool classroom in each ECE middle.
The customary day program for PreK is 8:15 a.m. to three:15 p.m. Monday by Friday. The prolonged day program can be supplied for each PreK and toddlers with an prolonged day from 7:15 a.m. – 5:15 p.m. Monday by Friday.
During the month of April, RFSD is internet hosting site-based enrollment days at its early childhood facilities. Cole stated that they had about 25 households present as much as the latest enrollment day.
“The majority were Spanish-speaking families. We felt good about who we were bringing in and who we are helping access our programs,” Cole stated. “Families can stop by our preschools on a Wednesday in April for an ECE open house. They can meet with staff, talk with other ECE programs and go through the application process.”
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