Island Park’s full-day pre-kindergarten program is underway

Even though it had just a little over a month to prepare, Island Park’s full-day pre-kindergarten program is off to a great start. The program, which is funded by a $600,000 grant from the New York State Board of Education, started on Sept. 29 at Lincoln Orens Middle School.

“Our pre-K is going great,” said Superintendent Rosmarie Bovino. “We’re very happy about the way program has been launched. We have all of our employees in place, our teachers and our teacher aides.”

There are 62 students in the pre-K, and there are three classes – two classes of 21 and one class of 20. Classes run from Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Each class has a teacher and two paraprofessionals, otherwise known as teacher aides. The class sizes, time in class and number of teachers are all determined by state standards. The program boasts assessments in case children need early intervention and bus transportation for the children.

The one small snafu was that the safety seats for the buses did not arrive in time, and parents had to bring their children to school for the first week of pre-K. But even that turned out to have an unexpected benefit. “It gave parents an opportunity to see [the] teachers,” Bovino said. “In the future we may do the same thing for the first week of classes.”

Nevertheless, the safety seats arrived on Oct. 1 and were installed on Oct. 2 and 3. The bus service started on Oct. 6.

The grant is part of a statewide push for full-day pre-K. Interested parties had to send an application the state Education Department. The applications were scored on a 100-point scale. Bovino did not know the district’s score but assumes it was very high, because Island Park received all of the money it asked for.

Overall, NYSED granted $340 million to 81 school districts and community organizations to start programs. The program will run for five years but the state must approve the money for each year. Bovino has said that Island Park’s pre-K will run as long as New York State continues to provide funding.

There will be a pre-K parent meeting on Oct. 16.