Preschools set to merge at ECC

On Wednesday, ECC principal Callie Anderson and Head Start director Julie Lang shared their plans to merge the Panther Pride preschool program and Matura’s Head Start, starting this fall.

“I’ve had the vision to be able to work collaboratively for a lot of years,” Lang said. “We hate to be, here’s our Panther Pride, here’s our other kids, our lower income kids. They’re going to come to kindergarten with all of these kids, so why not start that a little bit earlier. Bringing all the kids together, nobody knows who’s low-income, who’s high-income. That’s the vision we’ve had.”

Anderson said that, while the kids will all be taught together, it won’t affect the current funding system.

“They’re all going to come to preschool together, it’s just there are multiple funding sources now, just based on whatever you would qualify for,” Anderson said. “Some of our students will still remain private pay, some will remain funded through Matura Head Start, we have some that will receive scholarships, the ECI (Early Childhood Iowa). We think that this will be great to integrate all these kids at the ages of three and four instead of waiting until kindergarten.”

The pair shared they have done a lot of work to get the preschool merge ready for the upcoming school year.

“I’ll be housed up here in the Early Childhood Center in our current Panther Pride classrooms,” Anderson said. “I know we need some more classrooms because you have three open classrooms right now and I have four programs in two classrooms. I know we’re going to have to increase our space. By collaborating we’re increasing our staff, increasing our student enrollment. It just makes sense. We’ve already met with all of the community preschool providers and let them know what we’re doing. We are the only two left that are non-faith-based educational programs, so it just made sense to start working together.”

The ECC will have full-day and half-day options for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds.

“In the Head Start world, they are always trying to make sure that we’re working to meet the needs of working families,” Lang said. “If there’s families that are working or going to school, they can have an option of being there all day. Not knowing what some of the needs of the families are, we’re making a plan for kind of everything not knowing for sure what we’ll get after enrollment.”

Before the next school year begins, Anderson said the ECC will have to make a couple changes.

“Right now, I am needing a fourth classroom with an on-suite bathroom to meet our early childhood standards and stay in ratio when a little one has to use the restroom,” Anderson said. “I’m working with our maintenance and custodial staff to brainstorm what that could look like. I think we have a plan. It’s going to require some change on the current layout of our building, but our ECC staff is very flexible.”

Anderson and Lang hope this merge will stop confusion and create a tighter bond in the children.

“We know that there are a lot of different experiences in the different preschool programs, and that’s where we’re seeing the differences,” Anderson said. “There may be differences in expectations or in classroom management. It’s just like any other school program. Something that’s ok in this classroom might not be ok in that classroom. We don’t want the children to have to make those adjustments. If we are all under one roof, under one plan, following the same expectations, it only sets them up for success in kindergarten.”

Next year’s preschool enrollment is open now.

“All of the enrollments are going to flow through the Early Childhood Center’s office, so registration packets are going to be available here and will be returned here,” Anderson said. “They will all funnel through the Matura Head Start office to determine if they are eligible for funding through them. If they do not meet the income criteria through Matura, then we flow them through ECI to see if they are scholarship eligible, who needs state-wide voluntary funding, all the layering of the finances happens in the business offices, it’s’ a collaboration between our office and the Head Start office, and then we just tag which funding sources go with which kids. Registration is open. We’ve already had our first open house and have a second one coming up in May.”

In the end, the pair just want their preschoolers to thrive as they continue in their schooling and unite with their classmates.

“They all walk across the stage together on graduation day, so our goal is to just start that a little bit sooner,” Anderson said.