Park County School District 1 will no longer offer a pre-kindergarten class which will avoid competition with local preschool providers. However, a program will take its place to give kindergarten-aged students an extra year to prepare for kindergarten. 

This school year concerns were raised that the school district’s pre-k class was competing with area preschools, which prompted the district to announce in the winter that the program as it currently stood will change.

Among these changes is the end of the pre-k liaison position which may be replaced by increased interaction between preschools and kindergarten teachers. In his opinion, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Jason Sleep said that he thinks there is still a need for a liaison between the district and preschools. Input from preschool providers indicated that they “like kindergarten teachers, because they have more credibility, in their opinion.”

“So we’re trying to think about how can we get some of our kindergarten teachers to visit some of the preschools and get familiar with the kids, which would then help with transitioning in the spring,” Sleep said. “There’s still a lot of work that needs to go into that. But principals have had that discussion so we’re going to have the year to develop that idea.”

The Classic Kindergarten program is not a new idea for PCSD1. Sleep said that a Classic Kindergarten program had been discussed in March 2018, years prior to concerns being raised about the district’s pre-k class. 

“So [the idea has] been bounced around, this was kind of a nice problem to have, because it made us look deeper into what we were feeling we were missing in our own district,” Sleep said.

He added that the district could have opened a full time preschool that charged parents rather than offer a service for free, which would level the playing field with local preschools, but Classic Kindergarten has always been discussed, he said, and will provide an option for parents’ whose 5-year-olds are not quite ready for traditional kindergarten. Unlike a preschool, this program will not serve children under the age of 5 and it will operate as a full-day program taught by Powell graduate and former Worland Elementary School teacher Brooklyn Sweet, with Parkside Elementary Principal Jason Hillman serving as the program’s principal. The program will be housed in Parkside but upon entering traditional kindergarten these students will return to the schools within the boundaries of their home address.

Sleep calls it an “intermediate step between preschool and regular kindergarten. He said that after talking to districts like Johnson County who already have a program he was sold on the idea that Classic Kindergarten children often end up being leaders in their class because they had a jumpstart learning about how schools function.

Sleep said that he hopes to send Sweet to school districts where a Classic Kindergarten program is already in place and done well. The “backbone curriculum” is still being developed but Sleep said that pieces of what is already used in the district.

Sleep said that curriculum has not been set as of right now but the program utilizes three tiers for selecting students. The first tier is students born between Aug. 1 and Sept. 15, the second tier is students born between June 1 and July 31 and third tier of students are children born before June 1. 

Tier 1 students will be selected in part by reviewing the results of the traditional kindergarten screening which is required for students in these age groups by state statute. Sleep said for tiers two and three the selection process is more subjective, while it has not been decided Sleep said that kindergarten teachers will be consulted about what other selection criteria should be considered. This will be used by a selection committee. 

“Ultimately, we still want to work with the parents to say, ‘this is what our data is telling us. What would you like to do?’”

Going into next school year Sleep said class size will initially be eight students although he said that student numbers may dictate change if the class of eight is filled early in the tier system.