Approximately 3,000 Detroit Public Schools pre-kindergarten students head to school for the first time on September 22 following mandatory home visits by their teachers with every family.
The district will offer 189 Great Start Readiness and Title I pre-kindergarten classrooms, including four of the top 10 ranked preschool programs in the city that were newly rated this week by Excellent Schools Detroit. DPS’ Pre-K classrooms include new programs at Chrysler Elementary and Nichols Elementary, where a satellite Pre-K classroom will be held at nearby Moses Field. Chrysler ranked as one of the top ten elementary schools in the city by Excellent Schools Detroit, and Nichols has never before offered parents an early childhood education option. The new offerings are part of an overall expansion of early childhood offerings in DPS. There are no income restrictions for city of Detroit residents attending the Title 1 classrooms, such as those at Nichols/Moses Field and Chrysler.
“Too often, kindergartners who did not experience pre-kindergarten start their education academically behind their peers who participated in early childhood classes. To level the playing field and ensure all of our students get a great start to their education, we want to make high-quality pre-kindergarten available for every child,” said Karen Ridgeway, DPS Superintendent of academics. “We are extremely excited to not only expand our early childhood education offerings districtwide, but to make new pre-kindergarten classrooms available to our families who have so long requested them.”
The district also recently announced it will partner with two non-profit agencies, Development Centers, Inc. and Southwest Counseling Solutions, Inc., to offer 16 additional early childhood classrooms for ages 0-5. Pre-kindergarten classrooms will be leased to the agencies at Beard, Earhart, Durfee, Gompers and Mark Twain. In total, DPS will house 205 Pre-K classrooms across the district, which is an increase in early childhood programming.
Detroit Public Schools’ pre-kindergarten classroom curriculum is aligned with the National Early Childhood Standards and Michigan State Board of Education Early Childhood Standards of Quality. To ensure fidelity to the standards, the early childhood programs are monitored through an inclusive and collaborative approach. The building principal, central staff and program supervisors monitor teaching and learning through the pre-kindergarten classroom visitation system, teacher evaluation, student assessments Child Observation Record (COR) and through a formalized process, the Program Quality Assessment (PQA).
Parents interested in finding out more about DPS’ early childhood education program offerings should call DPS’ Foundation for Early Learners at (313) 347-8923. To see all sites, go to detroitk12.org/prek.
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