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All-day preschool comes to Youngstown schools
YOUNGSTOWN
A half-day goes full for the Youngstown City School District preschool program.
Youngstown City Schools and Alta Head Start are collaborating to offer all-day, five days per week, preschool at its elementary school buildings. Before this, the district offered only a half-day program four days a week. The full-day preschool is underway.
Krish Mohip, schools chief executive officer, said, “The children get to spend more time learning about and getting prepared for school and for the way a school day is structured. They learn from a young age how to work collaboratively.”
The preschool is available for 3- to 5-year-olds who live within the school district. There is no cost to families for their children to attend. State funding allowed the district to expand the preschool program.
The 22 preschool classrooms are located in Choffin Career and Technical Center, Harding, Martin Luther King, Paul C. Bunn, William Holmes McGuffey, Williamson and Taft elementary schools, and at Wilson Programs of Progress.
The collaboration allows each class to have two qualified teachers and an educational assistant.
Joe Shorokey, chief executive officer of Alta Care Group, is excited to see the partnership that’s been in the works for almost a year finally come to fruition.
“This was on our radar because a partnership would be not only good for both organizations, but really good for preschoolers and their families,” he said. “To be able to bring our skills [to Youngstown] and pair them with the educational skills of Youngstown schools is just a great marriage.”
The partnership also permitted Alta Care Group access to be spread throughout the city – something Shorokey said he might not have been able to do independently.
Tim Filipovich, the district’s chief of accountability, said the collaboration was in its planning stages after administrators expressed interest in expanding Youngstown’s preschool program.
“What we wanted to find out was how we can increase the number of students and the amount of time they’re attending preschool while also trying to localize them in their neighborhood schools,” Filipovich said. “The more time we have with those youngsters in school, the more literacy, math and social emotional skills we can teach them.”
The children also will be learning socialization skills with their peers as well as getting proper nutrition, said Lori Kopp, executive director of YCSD’s student services department.
“We’re hoping that this strong foundation will help them continue successfully in kindergarten through 12th grade,” she said.
Filipovich said the 3- to 6-year-old age range is one of the most crucial development phases in the brain.
“If instructed with the right skills to support their learning they move through and learn how to read and do a lot better in the long run,” he said. “At the end of the day, we are putting in place students in kindergarten that have the skills to be successful.”
“Not only does it make sense for the Youngstown City Schools, really, it just makes sense for the community,” Shorokey added.