New focus on early education on first day of preschool in U46

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Teacher Carol Prieur comforts preschooler Brooke Lebeter on the first day of school Tuesday at Huff Elementary School in Elgin. | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: November 16, 2011 2:00AM

ELGIN — While they waited for the rest of their class to arrive on the first day of preschool, Carol Prieur’s students lined the hallways of Huff Elementary School, sitting cross-legged on colored dots on the floor.

Twins Haylie and Kaylie Gallegos, wearing pink ribbons in their matching side ponytails, swapped the board books they’d chosen from a plastic bin with each other. Meantime, Keila Vellegas named the animals on the cover of her book, “Opposites,” which showed an elephant on a see-saw with …

“A bunny!” she exclaimed. “He’s too little.”

That’s one way Illinois’ second-largest school district is renewing its focus on early education this school year, according to Julie Kallenbach, Elgin School District U46 director of Early Learning Initiatives.

“We’re trying to use every minute of every day,” Kallenbach said.

Preschoolers started class at eight schools Wednesday across District U46.

And with that, the school district has started toward its goal to bring first-graders up to reading level. It’s also started partnerships with private preschool programs and other community groups, hired seven new preschool teachers, added 280 new preschool students and expanded its preschool program to three new locations.

That’s all because U46 made early education a district priority in Destination 2015, which the U46 Board of Education approved in December, according to Kallenbach.

“When you make that a district priority, that affects the decisions you make,” she said.

Destination 2015

Destination 2015 is a five-year accountability plan spells out a mission, vision, values and goals for the school district, as well as specific benchmarks and targets it wants to help its students meet by the year 2015. It will use the document to form the strategic plans it sets for each school year over the next five years.

One of those benchmarks is to have 98 percent of its first-graders reading at their grade level by 2015.

“Once you make that a benchmark, that really gets the community to rally behind it. We can’t make that benchmark without early childhood education,” Kallenbach said.

“All of” Destination 2015 really is about early childhood education, U46 spokesman Tony Sanders added.

That’s because the end result the district has targeted is for its graduates to score a 21 or higher on the ACT, he said. And looking at how students who already have made that score tested throughout elementary, middle and high school, all were at reading level in first grade, he said.

A total 66 percent of first-graders tested at or above their reading level in this spring’s standardized testing, according to data presented by U46. The district had targeted 71 percent for this school year.

One thing the school district has done to focus on raising those scores is split Kallenbach’s job into two positions. Last year, she had served as both director of early learning initiatives and principal of the Illinois Park Center for Early Learning in Elgin. The district had combined those positions that year after closing Woodland Heights Early Learning Center in Streamwood.

This year, it hired Apryl Lowe, previously a preschool coordinator and teacher in Geneva School District 304 and U46, to head up Illinois Park. That will allow Kallenbach “to do more big-picture work,” including writing a “project charter” for the district’s early education program, she said.

The district began writing project charters last year to look at the cost, timeline and obstacles to specific programs and initiatives, Sanders said.

“This year, we are using our project charters to drive many of the key areas in Destination 2015,” he said.

U46 also launched Partnerships for Early Learning after community members came to U46 to ask how they could help students reach those benchmarks, the director said. That program is finding ways for the district to work together with area child care and private preschool programs, Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin, the Grand Victoria Foundation of Elgin and the United Way of Elgin.

“We’re really excited about it,” Kallenbach said. “It’s been a longtime goal of mine to get the community preschools more involved, because they do the same things we do.”

Preschool for All

U46 also is able to serve 280 more preschool students this year, Kallenbach said, even though Illinois cut funding for early childhood education by 5 percent. That means the district can enroll about 1,800 students this year, Sanders added.

And the state still is $752,646 behind in the payments it had promised the district for early childhood education last year, according to the spokesman. Illinois currently owes the Elgin school district $8.5 million, mostly in transportation, Sanders said.

The district used only 80 percent of the grant of the grant money it had been promised last year, Kallenbach said.

“That was a strategy last year to make sure we didn’t overtax the district if that money didn’t come through,” she said.

But this year, the state also changed the way it distributed Preschool for All money, from a reapplication process every year to a competitive grant process.

The Elgin district was awarded a $3.8 million Preschool for All grant this year — about $500,000 more than last year, Kallenbach said.

That allowed the district to hire seven more preschool teachers this year, she said. It also allowed the district to have preschool classrooms at three new schools — Creekside Elementary School in Elgin, Liberty Elementary School in Bartlett and Ridge Circle Elementary School in Streamwood.

The district’s two main preschool locations remain at Illinois Park and Independence Center for Early Learning in Bartlett. Other schools with preschool classrooms include Huff, Otter Creek and Garfield elementary schools, all in Elgin.