The Board of Education for Galesburg CUSD #205 approved a pilot pre-k program Monday night, meant to help transition students who may not be developmentally ready for kindergarten.
The pilot program, called Begindergarten is designed for kindergarten-aged children who may not be quite ready for the kindergarten environment from a social-emotional standpoint.
Bright Futures Principal Jennifer Graves told the school board there have been behaviors that kindergarten teachers have seen in the last year that they’ve never seen before among young learners.
“The biggest thing when I’m talking to the kindergarten teachers is there are kids coming in that have never stepped foot in a school before. So, they don’t even know how to be around other kids,” Graves said during her presentation to the school board. “And, some of our students that went through the pandemic didn’t even get to go to babysitters, grandparents, play-dates, things like that. So, they haven’t had that experience and when they go into a typical kindergarten room it is very overwhelming.”
The pilot program will include 20 students, split between young kindergartners who may not be developmentally ready for kindergarten, 5-year-olds who may not have had any pre-school experience, and 4-year-olds who just missed the kindergarten cutoff.
Graves told the board the curriculum would help these students transition to kindergarten and teach them how to do things such as self-regulate their emotions. The hope, Graves said, was that students would enter kindergarten ready to meet 1st quarter benchmarks after the transitional year.
The board voted 6-1 in favor of the pilot program with Maury Lyon voting against it. He suggested, prior to the vote, that the kindergarten program needs to be better built for students’ needs instead of students being better equipped to handle kindergarten.
Board member Tianna Cervantez says there’s nothing stopping the district from revamping the kindergarten program and approving the pilot program. She suggests that there are some learning & social-emotional challenges that the youngest kids are dealing with right now.
