Royal City starts preschool

ROYAL CITY — The Royal City School District is implementing an early learning project, including a morning and afternoon preschool class starting next fall.

The project, called “Growing Great Learners,” addresses school readiness needs among Royal City’s children. The goal is to create a district preschool program and align it to licensed daycare and private preschool programs already operating in the area.

“We will ensure we all use the same curriculum, so when children enter kindergarten, they will all be on the same page,” said Carolyn Bunch, federal programs director for the district.

The project was made possible by a generous Yakima resident. Cliff Path was moved to help out the district when he visited his farm in Royal City, he said.

“I noticed an influx of young kids not getting properly prepared for kindergarten and wanted to do something about it,” said Path, Washington Fruit & Produce principal. “Education is important to me because it provides kids the opportunity to have great futures.”

Path met with Yakima’s Education Service District 105 (ESD) workers and District Superintendent RoseMarie Search to discuss the implementation of the early learning project. Path donated $75,000 to the district so the project could begin.

“This is like a dream come true,” Bunch said. “Our hope is that the children come to kindergarten with more enriched skills so they can start flying through school.”

ESD is funding curriculum for the 40 4-year-olds expected to register for the district’s preschool program. The district has never had a preschool because of financial difficulty.

“We have been wanting to have a preschool program for quite some time, but we don’t get any state funding for it so we’ve been unable to start one,” Bunch said. “By law, we are required to have a special education preschool-type program for unidentified special needs students, so we have that. But we desperately needed a program to prepare students for kindergarten.”

One part of the project involves district and ESD workers overseeing monthly partnership training for all preschool teachers and child care providers. Attendees will learn how to develop the cognitive, language, motor and social development of the children in their care.

“This extra help is going to be so beneficial to the teachers and their students,” Bunch said.

A Play and Learn Program is offered to families two days a week by the Child Care Resource and Referral Program of Catholic Family and Child Service. The program shows participants how to teach early learning skills and how to engage in oral language acquisition activities.

Child Care Resource and Referral is also overseeing a Community Café, where Royal City parents can participate in meetings to help them provide early learning skills at home.

“My own family benefited from well-organized early learning programs and I would hope all families could have access to similar experiences,” Path said. “The idea is to try to connect the next generation to educational opportunities not currently provided to them and their parents. Royal School District has passionate staff and is small enough that a program like this can make a real difference.”

An evaluation measuring the effectiveness of the project is in the works. Activities under the year-long sponsorship begin in May and the rest of the project’s components start in the summer.

The district preschool program will be ready for students the first week of October. District workers are at the beginning of planning stages, Bunch said.

“Plans should be completed by August,” Bunch reported. “We will have the place, the teachers and assessments of students for entry into the program completed by then.”

The district is looking to hire one teacher and an instructional assistant for the preschool program.

“We will be sending out information to the community in advance to let them know when and where all these program elements will take place,” Bunch said. “We will most likely have a parent meeting soon and will advertise this, so residents should keep their eyes open.”

For more information, call 509-346-2222.