Johnson County preschools are adding classes and increasing offerings in order to account for increased demand for their programs.
Most recently, Little Braves Preschool, which serves the Indian Creek district’s three, four, and five-year-olds, decided to add a morning class this fall exclusive to three-year-olds due to increased demand from parents.
The preschool serves 21 students with classes that mix three-year-olds with four and five-year-olds. The new class will not require any physical expansion of Indian Creek Elementary School, which houses the preschool. The new class will add room for 10 three-year-olds, elementary school Principal Keith Grant said.
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Across the county, educators and providers are adding classes in response to parent demand and the growing realization of the importance of early childhood learning.
For example, Franklin schools’ Cub Academy started in 2015-16 with three classrooms. Since that time, enrollment has increased from 60 to 100 and the preschool has a total of five classrooms, housed in the district’s elementary schools. The Indiana Department of Education expects more from its kindergartners than it did in the past, causing parents to take advantage of early childhood education, Preschool Director Katie Smith said.
“Our kindergartners leave reading,” Smith said. “As a child I didn’t leave reading. Kids know many memory words, letters and sounds.
“There’s a definite shift from previous years.”
The department of education highlights social and emotion development, reading and math as focuses for early childhood curriculum, Smith said. Along with academic learning, the opportunity for children to interact with their peers in a classroom setting before the start of kindergarten gives them an advantage, she said.
“The most important part of preschool is the developmental aspect of being in that setting,” Smith said. “Learning from other children and/or adults, social-emotional pieces (are) always in the preschool setting. (Those) pieces together lay an important foundation for kids going into kindergarten.”
Center Grove KinderCare, which is not associated with the school district, added a transitional kindergarten two years ago in order to address preparedness for kindergarten. The number of students age 3 to 5 enrolled has increased to 30 from 20, center director Bethany Janssen said. A revamped phonics program that serves children as young as 3 has grown in popularity, increasing in attendance from 10 to 23 since late 2017, she said.
“It’s an extra opportunity for (children) to have a one-on-one or small group focused on phonics education,” Janssen said. “Those who start by (age) 3, reading before they get to kindergarten helps with the ability to write and form letters. The literacy prepares them for kindergarten.”
At Indian Creek, the preschool’s increase in student body from 21 this year to 30 in the fall is indicative of parents’ realization that early childhood education is needed in order for children to not fall behind their peers when they enter kindergarten, Superintendent Tim Edsell said.
“Preschool is very important to get students acclimated to learning and to get that head start, so to speak, in understanding the alphabet and numbering system and whatever else is part of the curriculum,” Edsell said.
Grant said the demand for the program is due to population growth and parents learning about the program.
“More parents want their kids to go to the preschool,” Grant said. “It’s a great curriculum.”
The morning classes will not only allow three-year-olds to learn at their own pace, but will allow the toddlers to be fully awake rather than being tired in the middle of an afternoon session, preschool teacher Ellen Engelking said.
At the preschool, student learn social skills, physical development, colors, shapes, letters and numbers. The preschool also helps with social-emotional development, Grant said. The curriculum is roughly the same for all ages, although four and five-year-olds go more in-depth in subject matter, Engelking said.
“Preschool is so important,” Engelking said. “It lays the foundation for kindergarten. We teach children academics, how to sit on a carpet, how to line up, how to follow one-step directions from someone who’s not their parents, how to work on color, shapes and number and letter recognition.”
Johnson County is home to about 20 preschools, giving parents options when deciding whether to pay for learning before kindergarten.
A program that serves low-income families is seeing less interest from parents, possibly due to a lack of awareness. Head Start, which offers a free preschool program for ages 3 to 5, has seen its Franklin wait-list drop from 15 to 20 children to only one or two, Head Start health specialist Cassie Hawkins said.
The program serves families making up to 130 percent of the federal poverty level. Families with the most need are the first to be served, she said.
“It has declined over the years,” Hawkins said. “We’re struggling to maintain a wait list. We have to maintain a specific enrollment to meet (qualifications for) our federal grant. We’ve been able to meet the enrollment based on the slots we’d keep open, but there’s a lot of turnover.”
The preschool program, which serves 86 children in Franklin and 30 in Greenwood, may be at a disadvantage due to the number of options parents have in the area or a relative lack of awareness that the program is free, Hawkins said.
