Syracuse City School District is among 25 school districts that collectively received $10.4 million in funding to provide quality pre-K programs for 3-year-olds in New York state.

New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a press release that the program is aiming to increase access to quality pre-K programs for 1,500 3-year-old students and support the expansion of pre-K in 25 high-need districts. The funding also aims to improve the academic future for all students.

Syracuse City School District is expected to receive a $1.2 million earmark.

“Every child deserves a fair shot at a high-quality education,”  Cuomo said in the press release. “This funding will help level the academic playing field for children in these underprivileged communities, giving them opportunity to succeed, thrive and ultimately lead in New York.”

Margo Nish, director of early childhood education at the Syracuse City School District, said as this grant was for 3-year-olds, it would allow children to get two years of preschool.

The benefits of a quality pre-K education, Nish said, include increased language development and greater school readiness. She added that children who had a quality pre-K education were more likely to stay in school and move beyond postsecondary education employment or college.

This grant would also have a positive impact on students from low-income families, she said.

“There have been a lot of studies and research on impact of poverty on children’s learning,” she said. “If a child has not had opportunities to be heavily immersed in a wide range of experiences in the world, this affects his learning.”

Even though the Syracuse City School District was one of the districts that were awarded the most funding due to its poverty and the high need of the district, it was also awarded funding because the district already had a high quality pre-K, Nish noted.

“We have universal pre-K, expanded pre-K programs, all different kinds,” she said.

She also said the district has a high quality program that is run by experienced teachers, aligns with Common Core standards and is a good transition plan from pre-K to kindergarten.

Nish said with the questions they had to answer to determine their eligibility for funding, they let the state know about how they recruited children for pre-K programs, where there were specific gaps in early learning in the district in addition to the fact that the district was high-need.

The district used an early childhood curricula, Nish said, which was research-based and aligned with state standards. She added that they had an ongoing assessment and progress monitoring of all the children in the district and a huge focus on the development of all the staff.

“All districts are required to collaborate with agency partners for pre-K programs under any fund, but we take it a step further,” she said. “These are all our children, whether they are in a district classroom or an agency classroom. We collaborate heavily with the agencies, they use our pre-K curriculum and we provide supervision and support to them, which is unique to Syracuse.”

Nish said, with the funding, the Syracuse City School District would be able to provide pre-K for 77 more full-day 3-year-olds and 66 new half-day 3-year-olds.

Across New York state, she said, there had not been a program for 3-year-olds to get pre-K before and she believed having children able to access good pre-K would make a big difference.

“I believe we will see this is a wonderful investment and we’ll see that children will be succeeding in long term,” Nish said.

Published on November 30, 2016 at 12:39 am

Contact Deniz: dsahintu@syr.edu