While most students enjoy a couple of more weeks of summer, the latest cohort of little learners at Vancouver Public Schools campuses are getting to work a little early.
Vancouver Public Schools’ Kindergarten Jump Start program, an extended introduction to children’s first year of school, started its first week Monday at six campuses. At the district’s 15 Title I schools — campuses with a high population of low-income students — the program is in its third and final week.
The free, optional program gives incoming kindergartners and their parents a taste of what to expect when the school year begins. Students spend their morning playing with their future classmates, learning letters and math, sitting still while their teacher leads lessons, and doing a hands-on art project. In many cases, children are with their assigned kindergarten teachers, helping them feel comfortable in their own classroom.
At Martin Luther King Elementary School on Monday, where students are wrapping up Jump Start ahead of starting school at the end of the month, 30 future kindergartners danced and sang, identified their own names from an attendance chart and colored and cut out owls in the shape of the letter “O.”
Melle Soles, Jump Start coordinator for Martin Luther King Elementary School and Marshall Elementary School, said students and their families know the school’s routines and expectations before the year starts.
“It makes for a smoother transition into kindergarten,” Soles said. “It makes it easier on the parents and the kids as well.”
It’s simple skills these students are developing — ranging from lining up for recess to holding a crayon — but Shari Perea, a kindergarten teacher at Martin Luther King Elementary School, said the program helps children start the school year ready to learn. Her Jump Start students become role models for those who didn’t participate, helping her keep the class on track.
“It provides some fantastic leaders once the school year begins,” Perea said as children milled around her, clamoring to show her their brightly colored owls.
The program can be especially important for students in the district’s highest poverty schools, where students are more likely to have additional barriers to succeeding in kindergarten. In 2016, 87.5 percent of the Martin Luther King Elementary School’s 497 students received free and reduced-price meals, and 33.4 percent were enrolled in an English-language learning program, according to the most recent data from the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Office.
Some students have not attended preschool before, or may have limited vocabulary, or their motor skills may need some work, Perea said.
“This program helps level things out a bit,” Perea said.
The Jump Start program is funded through $110,000 in local levy dollars, and federal dollars cover the $120,000 in extra costs for the additional two weeks at Title 1 schools.
Kendra Yamamoto, a co-coordinator for the Jump Start program district-wide, estimates 930 of the district’s kindergartners participate in the program. It’s hard to say how many kindergartners will be registered districtwide in total, as some parents wait to register their children until the first day of school. But about 90 percent of the district’s elementary teachers sign up to teach the program, which Yamamoto said reflects how valuable those weeks are for teachers.
“Teachers are jumping in on the first official day of school with potentially three weeks, rather than meeting everyone on the first day,” she said. “That makes a huge difference in how those kids are transitioning into school.”
