Lincoln School to increase minimum age to attend preschool next year

The Lincoln School Board has voted to raise the minimum age to attend Lincoln's free pre-school from three to four years old.

Montana is one of nine states without state funded pre-school programs. However, the 2018-19 school years saw the introduction of Lincoln's first free pre-school program, thanks to grant funding that made the program possible. Originally, the program accepted three and four-year-olds, but the minimum age will rise to four in the 2019-20 school year.

Lincoln Schools Superintendent/Principal Carla Anderson said the decision to raise the age cap was based on the difference in learning abilities between the two age groups. Originally, she said, pre-school instructor Sondra Grigsby had hoped to narrow the learning gap between three and four-year-olds. However, over the course the school year it became apparent that wouldn't be possible.

"It's actually kind of becoming a bigger gap. These little fours are ready to start academics, and the threes are just playing and are way too young," said Anderson. "We decided that we're just going to do the fours and the early fives so that it can be more of an educational setting than a babysitting setting."

Diana Jacobs owned and operated Lincoln's only licensed day care, "God's Little Blessings," for nearly a decade until the business's closure last year on the heels of the free pre-school's inception. She regularly conducted pre-school classes for three and four-year-olds in her day-care and said there is a significant learning gap between the two ages.

"The law only requires that you teach colors, shapes and name recognition at three," she said. "You don't start with the letters and numbers and actually writing their names until they're four and five, because they just mentally aren't able to do that cognitive skill at three and do it successfully, and if you start them too early then they become overwhelmed."

Anderson expects ten four-year-olds to be enrolled in next year's pre-school program, while five incoming kindergarteners will be alumni of the program. She said the school is currently searching for a new pre-school teacher. Grigsby, who splits her time between pre-school and high school special education, will be returning her full attentions to her high-school students.

"We are advertising for a new pre-k teacher to be full time because Sondra Grigsby is going back full time to the high-school resource room," Anderson said. "She felt like, when she split herself, she was more with the little kids and her high-school kids suffered."

In recent years, Jacobs said, day-care enrollment usually averaged between ten and twelve kids per day. She said she currently has no plans to re-open God's Little Blessings.

"It would be really expensive to get back into it again," she said. "There's a lot involved with becoming legal to do that."

The closure of the business took an emotional toll as well – something Jacobs said she's reluctant to revisit.

"For another reason, it was just too heartbreaking. It was very hard for me to make that transition from all of those kids, doing it for so many years, to nothing,"

Anderson acknowledges the need for a facility in Lincoln that can accommodate not only three-year-olds, but younger toddlers and babies.

"It leaves an opportunity for someone to open a daycare, for sure, and we're hoping that someone will do that," she said. "There's a definite need."