Lincoln Preschool prepares to welcome youngsters

With Lincoln School's first class of 15 preschoolers set to arrive in less than a week, Sondra Grigsby said it's been a big challenge starting a preschool from scratch.

"Luckily, I've worked in preschools before, but it's been a few years," said Grigsby, who has a degree in early childhood education and has worked as Lincoln High School's grade 7-12 Special Education teacher for the last 15 years. "We did a bunch of touring of preschools prior, but it's a bit of a set up starting from scratch, getting all the stuff and hoping it gets here on time."

The preschool grew out of a $750,000 Montana Comprehensive Literacy Project Grant awarded to Lincoln Public Schools early this year. Lincoln is one of 21 districts in Montana awarded such a grant, which is being paid out over a four-year period. The grant is designed to improve reading, writing, and digital literacy skills among disadvantaged kids from age 4 through the 12th grade, and required the school to develop a plan that pays special attention to development of kids between age four and kindergarten. The school subsequently opted to open the preschool to 3 year olds as well.

Grigsby said the preschool will be a mostly self-contained set up, with kids eating family style lunches in their classroom, which is also equipped with its own bathroom. The preschoolers will also have their own, separate recess times.

The arrangement should help kids work up developmentally to be ready for school once they hit kindergarten age, and should also help them catch any special needs issues early on, Grigsby said.

The preschool also means a new staff member to give Grigsby a hand. Although she will handle the morning schedule at the preschool, Grigsby will return to work in the 7-12 resource room in the afternoon and Mishayla Fallis will oversee the preschool. One of four new hires at the school this year, Fallis comes to Lincoln with a two-year degree in early childhood development, and will take over for Grigsby in the afternoons. Though Grigsby hasn't met her yet, she said Fallis has worked at a preschool in the past, and brings experience to the job.

Switching between working with very young kids in the morning and older students in the afternoon may seem daunting, but it's not exactly a foreign concept for Grigsby, who has worked similar split shifts as a teacher in the past.

"It's not quite as dramatic. It was 4th and 5th and then 9th and 10th, but I had to switch schools, so this is in the same building," she said.

In developing the preschool, Grigsby is looking beyond the requirements of the Literacy Grant, which expires in 2021 and may not be renewed.

Several of the preschools they visited as part of the planning process have additional structure and rules in place, due to the requirements of other grant funding sources, and Grigsby is working to emulate them.

"A preschool grant should become available again about the time the reading grant runs out," she said. "I've tried to use some of the stuff I know they want and incorporate some of it now, so in the future if we are able to get a grant that has more structure, we already kind of have it built in."

For now, Grigsby has a more pressing issue to deal with. As the start of the school year looms, much of the equipment and kid's furniture they ordered has yet to arrive.

"I have some of it but I don't have all of it, and what I'm missing are some of the bigger pieces that will need to be really set up and organized," she said, adding she hopes everything arrives in time. If not, she may have to revamp things a little bit for the first few days.

Lincoln Schools Superintendent Carla Anderson said they ordered everything early and thought they were on top of it, but nevertheless she has faith it will work out. "If anybody can make it work, its Ms. Grigsby."

Although the preschool has largely been met with excitement by many in the community, including school staff members with preschool aged kids, it will leave a hole in the community on Sept. 1. With so many kids who might normally attend daycare now eligible for preschool, Diana and Mike Jacob plan to close God's Little Blessings, Lincoln's only daycare, Aug. 31.