Denise Stevens can easily tell if a child has had the benefit of pre-kindergarten education.
Children with a pre-K background are usually more communicative and independent because they have learned to interact with people outside of their tight circle of family and friends, said Stevens, principal of Clayton County’s Kemp Primary School.
That’s the opposite of children who didn’t attend pre-K. Those children often struggle with spelling their names or with speech, she said.
“It’s because they didn’t have a lot of conversations outside of the home,” Stevens said.
The Clayton County school system is trying to change that. Superintendent Morcease Beasley has been barnstorming the county over the last several weeks to let parents know that pre-K, which in the past has been offered mainly through a lottery system, will now be available to any parent who wishes to help a child get a head start in education.
That’s important to the county. Historically, Clayton has had the highest unemployment rate in metro Atlanta and a disproportionate percentage of students on free-and-reduced lunch because of overall lower family incomes. Getting students educated earlier could improve test scores and make Clayton more competitive as a destination for families and jobs.
“If we can get our kids in pre-K in Clayton County, we will be one of the highest performing in this state and in this nation,” Beasley told the Clayton County Commission in earlier December in a pitch for pre-K.
The expansion will be funded by adding federal COVID-19 funding and local money to the allotment the district gets from the state for pre-K. The district did not break down those numbers.
“Clayton County Public Schools has an average of 3,600 kindergartners and we currently serve around 1,000 pre-K students,” Beasley said in an email. “We would like to see increases every year until we close the gap between the number of pre-K and kindergarten students.
“This may take several years given we must convince parents to take advantage of pre-K,” he said.
The push comes as pre-k and kindergarten enrollment is up about 7% in Georgia, according to state department of education figures. That is a turnaround from last year when parents kept pre-K and kindergarten students out of school. In Georgia, children are not required to attend school until the first grade.
The number of pre-K students has been creeping up in Clayton County after the district launched a campaign earlier this year to encourage enrollment through social media, advertising on phone apps and billboards at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
That has helped parents like Ja-Courtney Jenkins. Jenkins said her daughter, Braelyn, 5, who attends pre-K at Kemp primary, has grown more confident and her schoolwork improved tremendously because of the program.
“She’s improved at writing her name, learning her syllables,” said Jenkins, who also is an instructional support teacher at the school. “Her scores from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year have jumped 40 points.”
April Wilson, a teacher at the school, said one way to increase pre-K enrollment in Clayton and other counties is to have conversations about the program with parents who have other children in school.
“We catch them when they are picking up their other kids,” she said.
Beasley said parents can still sign their children up for pre-K in the second semester of this school year. To do, parents need to complete Pre-K Waiting list form at the school of their choice and they will be contacted in 24 to 48 hours on next steps.
“We believe that access to Pre-K is what needs to happen to eliminate achievement gaps as most achievement, learning, or opportunity gaps begin in and/or before pre-K,” he said.
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