The Avon Central School District is now accepting applications for enrollment in its pre-kindergarten program for the 2022-23 school year.
Created last year after an influx of state funding, the district’s pre-k program currently serves one section of 20 students who were selected for open slots via a lottery. But Elementary School Principal Robert Lupisella is hoping that there’s enough interest for the coming school year for the district to offer two pre-k sections of up to 20 students each.
“Right now, we are aware of at least 34 students in the district that would be eligible for the program. We’re kind of hoping that maybe, possibly, there are others out there who are just not aware of the program yet,” said Lupisella. “If we are able to get a greater number of pre-k students that approaches 40, then we may be able to have enough children to offer two sections.”
The district recently mailed enrollment forms to the 34 in-district families with pre-k-age children it’s aware of. Parents interested in enrolling their children who did not receive a form in the mail should call Elementary School Secretary Beth Herberger at (585) 226-2455, ext. 1110. Parents can also access the form by clicking here. Children must be four years old by Dec. 1, 2022 in order to enroll in the pre-k program for the 2022-23 school year. The deadline to register has been extended to March 18.
Depending on the number of applications it receives, the district will then schedule a lottery drawing at the end of March that will determine which students are accepted into the program. Parents whose children are not selected via the lottery will be able to enroll them in the Kid’s Club Childcare Center, the school district's state education UPK designated partner, on Collins Street in Avon at a subsidized rate.
‘A positive difference’
Veteran teacher Sara Brown helped create Avon’s pre-k program last year and currently serves as the program’s lead classroom teacher. Before making the switch to pre-k this year, Brown taught first and second grade at Lima Christian School for eight years and kindergarten at Avon for 15. She’s joined in the district’s pre-k classroom by teacher assistant Lori Roberts, a former classroom teacher at Brighton Central Schools, and teacher aide Michael Garrett, who was hired on at Avon this year after a 54-year career in civil engineering.
Brown said the pre-k program is less focused on students’ academic success in the traditional sense and more concerned with getting students in a place where they can be receptive to learning in an instructional setting in future grades.
“Our primary goal as a team is centered on social emotional awareness - helping kids to recognize their own emotions and how the way they act or behave impacts other people in their school community, in their classroom community,” Brown explained. “They also start to value learning and how that helps them understand their world better.”
Garrett said he’s already seen tangible gains in students’ ability to understand and carry out sets of instructions - a learned skill that requires practice. At the beginning of the year, for instance, the process of students arriving at school in the morning and getting ready for the day looked very different than it does now, he said.
“When they walk in the door, they now know because we taught them for about three weeks every day, that you’re to unpack your backpack, put your take home folder in the blue box, put your lunch on the floor in the cubby, hang your coat up and wash your hands,” said Garrett. “Those are the first steps in the morning and now they know those first steps. So those first steps may be very different in the next year but they've come to understand, come to master a set of instructions that’s five or six steps long and now they do it with almost no encouragement.”
Even things as seemingly simple as holding a pair of scissors, opening a glue stick or walking quietly in a single-file line down the hallway present instructional opportunities, said Brown, that will pay dividends as students progress through higher grades.
“Why do we have to walk in a line? Why do we have to be quiet in the hall? We talk about why that’s important, we talk about respecting other learners in our school, those people who need to use the other side of the hall,” Brown explained. “So it’s teaching those reasons. There are reasons why these things are important in our school community and we really try to impress that upon the kids.”
Given the program’s focus on foundational skills needed to thrive in an instructional setting, Roberts said she’s excited to hear from kindergarten teachers next year about how her current pre-k students are doing.
“I really feel like there’s going to be a huge difference for the kindergarten teachers because of all these things that we’re doing now,” she said.
Added Brown: “Teaching pre-kindergarten skills used to be what we’d spend our time doing at the start of kindergarten. So when these 20 kids go on to kindergarten, they’ll already have those skills and will be solid with them so they can then start in a different place, doing other things.”
Avon’s pre-k program runs Monday through Friday from 9:05 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. In addition to classroom instruction, it offers students access to dedicated art, music, library and physical education teachers as well as speech therapy and counseling services, if needed.
And to those parents of pre-k-age children who are on the fence, unsure of whether to sign their child up or not, Garrett said they should be confident in the knowledge that he, Roberts and Brown care deeply about having a positive impact on each and every child that comes through their classroom.
“There’s three people here who have - I’m not going to even say a vested interest - who have a heartfelt desire to, more than anything else, make a positive difference in the lives of these 20 kids,” he said. “Profit and loss is not a part of it, economics really in any fashion isn't a part of it, a demand for excellence in academics is not a part of it. I guess I can only speak for myself but I feel like I’m speaking for our team when I say that we want to make a positive difference in their lives.”