Fulton Education Center adds new preschool

Fulton Education Center students in Linda Hall's class stop in place during a dance-and-freeze song Thursday. The school is registering students for a new preschool program, which will start in November. Funding that's supporting the program came from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education grant for $110,000.
Fulton Education Center students in Linda Hall's class stop in place during a dance-and-freeze song Thursday. The school is registering students for a new preschool program, which will start in November. Funding that's supporting the program came from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education grant for $110,000.

Parents of Fulton area children have a new option for preparing them for school thanks to a grant received by the Fulton Education Center.

photo

Wes and Sonya Fetch

The FEC, home to Fulton Public Schools' early intervention and early intervention special education preschool programs, recently received a $110,000 grant from the Missouri Preschool Project - funded through the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education - to start a new preschool program.

photo

Opening in early November, the FEC Preschool will offer two half-day classes - one in the morning and one in the afternoon - with a maximum of 15 in each class. Enrollment will be first-come, first-serve for students who will be entering kindergarten next year and who turned 4 years old by Aug. 1.

photo

There will be one teacher for both classes, and there will be an aide if the class size reaches more than 10 students.

FEC Director Jennifer Meyerhoff said the main differences between the new program and its existing preschools is that there are no criteria for students to attend, as with the early intervention and early intervention special education programs, and that students will attend five days a week rather than four.

The new preschool will also have a fee - $40 per week, dependent on income - with the hopes of it becoming self-sustaining over time. It also will be a parent pick-up and drop-off program, whereas the district provides transportation for the other programs.

Other than that, Meyerhoff said, students in the new preschool will have an identical experience as their cohorts on the other side of the building.

"They're going to follow the same schedule, the same amount of play time, the curriculum is the same, we have a state-approved assessment, our teachers are certified," Meyerhoff said. "They'll participate in everything the other classes do."

She said the new FEC Preschool will start off this year as a licensed program and then will be accredited, a process Meyerhoff said takes a couple of years. According to the district's research in writing the grant, the only other accredited preschool in Fulton is Growing Years.

Meyerhoff said the district decided to pursue the Missouri Preschool Project grant for the same reasons its other programs exist - to help ensure Callaway County children are prepared when they start school.

"When you look at our kids in kindergarten, about a third of them didn't have any preschool," she said. "With the standards today, school is changing ... is more demanding. There are more standards for kindergarten than there used to be ... preschool is where they're getting that."

Meyerhoff said one advantage the FEC Preschool will offer students is that its program ties in with the district's kindergarten program, which utilizes some of the same curriculum.

"The kindergarten uses Project Construct as well - they are all trained in it," she said. "The kindergarten teachers come here, we go there. We meet throughout the year to see what we can do to ease that transition as much as we can."

For more information, or to enroll, contact the Fulton Education Center at (573) 590-8050.

Katherine Cummins can be reached at (573) 826-2418 or [email protected].