If students test well, the agency will look to expand pilot program to other schools.
By
Anna Webb
Edition Date: 08/19/07
For Benito Garcia and Justus Arehart, both 5, Tuesday evening was all about show business.
The boys and a score of their classmates performed a Chilean folktale about a man and his pets. They sang. They squirmed. They stared. They waved their homemade papier-maché puppets. Afterward, they swarmed around a buffet of cookies and juice boxes on ice.
Behind the merriment lay a serious purpose.
The performance marked the end of a summer pilot program intended to get children academically and emotionally ready to enter kindergarten.
United Way Treasure Valley, Caldwell School District, Little Picasso Preschool and the Girl Scouts of Silver Sage Council collaborated to create and run the program.
It served 32 children who are just days away from starting kindergarten at Sacajawea Elementary in Caldwell, a school chosen because of its high percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch — one indication of poverty — and the high percentage of students who score low on standardized reading tests. No school in Canyon County, save its charter schools, reached its AYP goals this year.
"The earlier you intervene, whether it's with education or health care, the greater the return on the investment," said
Sally Zive of United Way.
Idaho does not have a public pre-kindergarten program.
Participants in the pilot program are helping United Way as well.
Their standardized test scores will help United Way determine the program's effectiveness, said
Zive.
If the students' scores show the program was successful, United Way will expand to other schools and look to local foundations for support.
"We've learned a few things this summer," said
Zive. "There has to be transportation, and parents must have trust in providers. It doesn't help to do a pilot program then find out we can't sustain it."
Partnership with the school and school district was key, she added. Sacajawea principal Greg Alexander bought into the program right away. He was a familiar face for families and helped identify students who might benefit from the prep classes, said
Zive.
One challenge arose when a mere 48 hours before the first class, program organizers found out that none of the kindergartners-to-be had transportation to class.
United Way gave $13,000 for the classroom activities, but the district gave $6,000 for buses.
"The school district came through at the 11th hour," said
Zive. "It takes a lot of focused people to make something like this work."
Dena Rojas, a pilot program teacher and one of the founders of Little Picasso, a nonprofit academic enrichment program that uses an arts-based curriculum, said there's a lot of need for academic preparation in Canyon County, but not a lot of money in the community to provide it.
"I don't think parents realize what the state expects kindergartners to know when they come to school," Rojas said.
Those skills, taught in the summer pilot program, include recognizing shapes, colors, the alphabet, letter sounds, rhyming, clapping the number of syllables in a word and writing your own name.
The list includes emotional skills like how to feel safe away from home, how to share, how to wait your turn and listen.
Tina Basaldua, Benito Garcia's mom, spent time in the pilot program classroom this summer.
Benito, who made a bright pink pig puppet for Tuesday's performance and sported a Spider-Man T-shirt, will start his year well.
"Seven weeks ago he didn't know his letters, but now he can write his name," said Basaldua.
Is Justus Arehart ready for kindergarten? "He says he is," said his older sister Braylynne, 12.
Anna Webb: 377-6431