When pre-Kindergarten registration opened for the Akron Public Schools last week, Angela Bergmann rushed to nab her daughter a full-day spot.
Elizabeth, 3, is already attending half-day preschool at Mason Community Learning Center in the mornings. She’s supposed to go to day care in the afternoons so her parents can work, but since Christmas, getting her to leave home again after lunch is a struggle.
“She was melting down,” Bergmann said. “Big tears, throwing herself on the floor. ‘Mommy, home. Mommy, stay home.’”
It was too many transitions for the toddler, Bergmann said. But in the fall, she’ll be able to have a consistent schedule — and keep learning in a program that has greatly improved the vocabulary of the toddler with expressive language delay, from fewer than 100 words last year to short sentences this spring.
Superintendent Michael Robinson has prioritized the expansion of pre-K, saying it’s imperative to help improve Kindergarten readiness and set children up for a successful future.
“I don’t have time to wait if I can help kids learn to read,” he said in February. “I’m interested in helping those kids early.”
Full-day options
Robinson wants to expand all the district’s half-day programs to full-day. For the fall, there will be 16 full-day classes available, as well as 34 half-day classes. The Akron Board of Education, as part of its redistricting and restructuring plan, agreed in March to open two new pre-K classrooms at a cost of $270,000. The district will also spend $90,000 to keep Essex Early Learning Center open; the building had been slated to close.
Tamea Caver, Akron’s assistant superintendent and chief academic officer, said there are 131 current preschoolers in the district eligible to move up to pre-K in the fall. That leaves 113 of the 244 full-day spots available for new children, if all the current students move to the district’s full-day program.
It’s not clear how many parents and guardians would elect to send their children to full-day pre-K, but the day registration opened, the parents of the six children who signed their kids up for pre-K all opted for full-day, according to district information. Bergmann said she signed up within the first hour. As of Tuesday, 56 students were registered for pre-K, though the district couldn’t say how many were continuing on from preschool.
Having students learn for more hours is beneficial for families and for the district, which hopes to have better-prepared students earlier, Caver said.
“For us, it’s [for] academic reasons. We feel like we can go deeper with literacy,” she said. “Just having them longer, there’s more time to dig deeper.”
Interest is high in full-day pre-K program
Expansion of full-day pre-K is part of the district’s strategic plan. Wanda Lash, director of student and family services, said an interest survey that went out earlier this year showed there were a large number of families who were not currently enrolled in Akron Public Schools but who were interested in sending their children to full-day pre-K.
“We were overwhelmingly surprised by the number of responses we did get,” she said of the more than 350 people who filled out an interest survey. “Just knowing our families, we’ve got a greater number of families out there in the district who would take advantage of these pre-K slots. To know we’ve got a whole community of families out there, they would take advantage, that’s great to know.”
Kia Waters would have loved to send her son, Amir Lindsey, to full-day pre-K. He’ll be going to kindergarten in the fall, but Waters said it would have been great if instead of afternoon pre-K at Stewart Early Learning Center this year, he’d had more schooling.
“It would’ve given me a little break,” she said.
Similarly, Jasren Mobley said if full-day pre-K was an option, her 5-year-old foster daughter would have flourished in it. Even with Stewart’s half-day program, Mobley said, it’s been easy to see her growth.
“For her, she loves school,” Mobley said. “If she could go all day, she would go all day.”
Mobley’s nephews also go to preschool and thrive in the district, she said, particularly when it comes to building friendships.
‘More of the good stuff’
Preschool provides a strong foundation for learning math, language, literacy and how to behave around others, said Lisa Lenhart, director of the University of Akron’s School of Education.
“A big part of preschool is learning those social skills and self regulation,” she said. “There are just so many benefits.”
While there are advantages to students getting any time in school from a young age, Lenhart said the increased instructional time in a full-day program vs. a half-day program makes a big difference.
“You get more of the good stuff,” she said. “People think it’s just playing and singing, but it’s very purposeful. It’s such a long-term way to think about the benefits.”
Those benefits, according to research, include a higher likelihood of graduation and a lower likelihood of being suspended during a student’s educational career, Lenhart said. She said good pre-K programs can help make learning more equitable for kids who might otherwise be behind when they got to kindergarten.
And full-day pre-K allows more opportunities for students to process and learn information, said Willa Smith, a University of Akron lecturer and the founder and CEO of Here For You Child Development Center.
In a half-day program, teachers rush to fit more things in, but transitioning from one lesson to the next takes more time with young people, Smith said. She said full-day pre-K lets kids take the time they need to learn at their own pace.
Most of a child’s brain development happens before age 5, Smith said, so starting to educate children in that period makes a big difference for future learning. She said, too, that full-day pre-K is a better fit for working parents. Having to pick up a child midway though the day can make it hard for parents who don’t have flexibility in their jobs.
“The reality is, our culture is a two-working-parent culture,” Smith said. “These folks need to work. Not disrupting their day, making them more employable, it’s extremely important.”
Full-time jobs require full-time coverage
In April 2022, a quarter of the 2,400 respondents to an Akron-area survey said they had been pulled from the workforce because of concerns about child care, said Michelle Collins, the executive director of ConxusNEO. The company, which convenes economic development and other groups to aid workforce development, conducted the survey. Among women, that number was a third.
Cem Ersahin is an engineer and his wife is a professor at Kent State University, so they needed full-day coverage for their daughter, Daphne. They send her to the Shaw JCC of Akron’s Mandel Early Childhood Education Center because it has a full-day pre-K program. An older child goes to King Community Learning Center, he said, and Daphne would likely also be at public school if full-day pre-K had been available there.
Ersahin is spending $250 a week to send Daphne to the JCC; half-day pre-K at APS is $75 a month paid on a sliding scale, but prices will rise this fall to $125 a month for half-day and $250 a month for full-day at APS. Mark Williamson, a district spokesperson, said that under the current price structure, 70% of families didn’t pay anything.
“Cost is important, but at the end of the day, the hours are more important,” Ersahin said. “Pre-K prepares them for kindergarten very well. We would never be able to give that support with two working parents.”
Tracey Aguilar is paying $60 a month to send her 4-year-old daughter, Isabella, to APS’ Stewart ELC half-day pre-K program. But then she spends close to $1,000 more a month on day care, she said, adding that there’s no way she could afford for Isabella to be in day care all day.
Aguilar said she thinks preschool should be free for everyone, something that’s being discussed by the city and partners to further expand access to learning.
“I work, so I struggle,” Aguilar said. “If not for this program, she would not have had any early learning.”
Still, the logistics of a half-day program are a challenge for Aguilar, who splits her lunch break into two half-hour pieces so she can drop off and pick up Isabella from school.
Aguilar said Isabella didn’t pick up on things as quickly as she might have with more instructional time. With the time spent eating and taking a classroom of children to the bathroom in a half-day program, a lot is lost.
“It would have made things a lot easier for me,” she said of a full-day program. “They do a great job, but in two hours, what can you really learn?”
‘It’s life-changing’
Caver said APS knows logistics for parents are among the barriers to filling all the available half-day pre-K slots the district has.
While there will be fewer overall public school pre-K slots available in the fall, Caver said she’s “really excited” about the opportunity to begin to make full-day pre-K the norm. She said the district plans to continue expanding access, with a goal of seeing a 10% increase in students’ kindergarten readiness on a language and literacy evaluation.
Robinson said he hoped the district would get an influx of students choosing pre-K who would then decide to stay at APS going forward.
“Our community needs this,” he said in February.
When Elizabeth attends full-day pre-K at Mason CLC starting in the fall, Bergmann said, the change for her family will be “massive.” Bergmann and her husband will be able to stop juggling who is watching Elizabeth and who is working when they can’t get her to day care, allowing them to end their workdays earlier. They expect a consistent schedule will help Elizabeth, as well.
And Elizabeth will have more learning time and access to tools her parents can’t give her. She’ll also have more exposure to peers and the opportunity to learn from a young age that people have different home lives and different beliefs than she does, Bergmann said.
She’s sure her daughter will be better prepared for kindergarten after next year than she would have been if her schooling was still part-time.
“I’m so excited,” Bergmann said. “It’s life-changing for me, and I have a flexible job. I can’t fathom for people who don’t.”
