A new pot of state money for preschool is expected to add at least 20 more slots to St. Paul Public Schools’ growing program.
Lawmakers set aside $27 million for the upcoming year with a goal of providing voluntary preK programs to an additional 3,700 kids.
A portion of that money was reserved for schools in the Minneapolis and St. Paul public districts. But because Minneapolis has more schools with higher concentrations of poverty, they will get an outsize share of those funds.
Minneapolis officials said they applied on behalf of their 10 poorest elementary schools. The St. Paul district applied for just two schools, Obama Elementary and American Indian Magnet.
When the state awards the money next month, St. Paul officials expect they’ll be able to add 20 slots at Obama for three-hour daily programming.
“We are pretty confident about Obama,” said chief academic officer Kate Wilcox-Harris.
American Indian Magnet wants to add 36 slots of 2.5-hour programming, but funding is unlikely for that school.
The preK seats are for children from low-income families who live fairly close to the funded school. The state grant criteria also prioritizes rural schools that don’t have high-quality child care programs nearby.
If funded, there’s no guarantee St. Paul will be able to fill its new seats. Parental demand is high for full-day preK, but the St. Paul district has hundreds of open seats for partial day programming.
“We know our families want full day and some of the outcomes are better for full day,” Wilcox-Harris said.
About 15 percent of the district’s preK slots are full day. Officials said they’d like to add more, but doing so would mean reducing the total number of children they could serve.
PreK UP 30 PERCENT
With a boost from the local property tax referendum in 2012, preschool enrollment in the St. Paul district has grown 30 percent in the last three years.
Last October St. Paul had 1,481 four-year-olds enrolled in voluntary preK plus 146 special-needs children who share the same classrooms but are funded differently.
There now is one preK student for every two St. Paul kindergarteners, and 32 of the district’s 41 elementary schools have preK classrooms.
Chief engagement officer Jackie Turner said St. Paul would have liked a larger share of the new preK funding, but they’ll take what they can get. She appreciates that lawmakers focused on low-income children, who typically enter kindergarten less prepared for school than their peers.
“Children who are living in poverty need it more to help with that gap,” she said.
Schools that get the grants likely will be awarded for at least three years.
Gov. Mark Dayton’s office called the grants a “historic first step” toward his goal of making quality preK available to all Minnesota four-year-olds.
Applicant schools
The Minnesota Department of Education has a preliminary rank of the 12 Twin Cities schools that applied for new preK funding. Awards will be announced in early August:
- Bethune (Minneapolis)
- Green Central Park (Minneapolis)
- Anishinabe Academy (Minneapolis)
- Lucy Laney (Minneapolis)
- Obama (St. Paul)
- Hmong International Academy (Minneapolis)
- Cityview Community (Minneapolis)
- Sullivan (Minneapolis)
- Nellie Stone Johnson (Minneapolis)
- American Indian Magnet (St. Paul)
- Jefferson (Minneapolis)
- Bryn Mawr (Minneapolis)