Most superintendents believe that a quality early learning experience can shape a student’s future—that pre-K can prepare kids for kindergarten, hone their social and emotional skills, and lay a foundation to learn math and reading in higher grades.
Yet, pre-K typically doesn’t make it to a district’s top priorities, according to a national survey of over 400 superintendents on early learning by researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of Texas in Austin, among others. Superintendents often have to battle school boards to direct more resources toward pre-K—only 25% of respondents agreed that pre-K is a priority for their school boards—and just 52% said their district has an intentional focus on creating a pre-K-to-3rd grade continuum of early education.
District leaders can play an important role in expanding pre-K access, especially at a time when policymakers across the country are increasingly supporting universal pre-K. But they have significant roadblocks to overcome in transforming a K-12 school system into one that welcomes 4-year-olds.
For example, districts don’t have unlimited funds to direct toward pre-K, and the focus on academic outcomes and test scores doesn’t always directly align with the play-based growth and development in the earliest grades.
“The gap exists because school districts are measured, evaluated, and rated on outcomes. Public schools, especially with all the current scrutiny and questions, are typically heavily investing to ensure those outcomes,” said Anna Stubblefield, the superintendent of , Kansas Public Schools in Kansas City, Kan., which uses federal funds, including for Head Start, to run early learning programs at four elementary schools.
Most district resources flow toward meeting these academic outcomes and are directed at older grades, she added.
There are also logistical challenges that come with welcoming pre-K students, like transportation. In Pennsylvania’s Fox Chapel area school district, Superintendent Mary Catherine Reljac said state laws can make it cumbersome for schools to organize daily transportation for pre-K students.
Parents drive their kids to school, which can often result in delays or absences. “There are infinite needs, but there are finite resources,” said Reljac.
Both Stubblefield and Reljac have made early learning a part of their districts’ strategic vision. They’ve found funding for pre-K and kindergarten programs, trained staff, and invested in learning more about early childhood education.
Education Week spoke to the two superintendents about their experiences. Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.
How have you made pre-K a strategic priority?
Stubblefield: We just finished our strategic plan and implemented it this year. We will ... work toward changing the practical balance of investing in pre-K while not neglecting those areas that impact [academic] outcomes. We’ve invested a lot on the back end, like college prep, at the secondary level.
Our North Star is that by 2031, 100% of our students will graduate with a diploma-plus while meeting or exceeding the state graduation rate, and we have intentionally said this starts in pre-K. In our early childhood experiences, we make sure that they are foundationally getting the skills, exposure, and curriculum, so that they will be on the road to graduating with a diploma.
Reljac: In the state of Pennsylvania, 1st grade is required, but kindergarten and pre-K are not. We have decided that they are important enough that we will invest the funds for [early learning]. But [considering] the current way that schools are funded in most states, and the needs that students have, as a superintendent, you are always having to scan the pre-K through 12th grade environment and understand what you would like to do, and then what you can do.
Despite the lack of funds, we’ve decided to create early childhood classroom spaces that are equipped with academic material and materials for play, for pretending, and creativity, and experimentation. High-quality literacy instruction includes phonics and phonemic awareness, and background knowledge, and even listening to books read aloud—these are incorporated strategically in the day.
In our district, we have time to not only meet within a grade level but also to meet across grade levels, and it’s built into a teacher’s day. For our pre-K educators, we also build in extra opportunities to be able to meet with other early learning providers in the region.
How do you support pre-K educators and staff?
Stubblefield: Our early childhood center principals are right there with our elementary, [middle], and high school principals. When we are talking conceptually about things that are happening in our district … they’re all in the same space and often in mixed groups. We try to always have them at the table and provide the professional development and have all of us in the room together talking about the continuum, not in isolation or as an afterthought.
Reljac: We run a primary teacher academy internally with our director of literacy for our new primary teachers in pre-K [and kindergarten]. The primary teacher academy talks about the “science of reading” and language acquisition and is targeted to provide our educators for our early learning program with the knowledge and strategies that are evidence-based and effective in teaching students.
We also offer professional development for early childhood providers in our region who are not part of our district but run a preschool program or a childcare program in the region. We bring those providers together a few times a year for continuing education credits for their certification. Connecting early childhood educators from the region is something that we find benefits our kids.
Do you have a district-level leader who leads your early childhood learning work?
Stubblefield: We have an executive director of early childhood. One of the things that we have done in the last few years is to build out our structure and support for the executive director. In addition, we have a director of early childhood, an assistant director, and coordinators.
[The executive director’s] main responsibility is to make sure that when we’re looking at our strategic plan, we’re intentionally making sure from pre-K to students aged 21, that we’re connecting those grades. When we’re planning, we have that perspective. It’s not an afterthought.
Reljac: We have an executive director for elementary education. She is only focused on elementary programming. She works in collaboration with the director of literacy and the director of student achievement. I do think you need somebody overseeing the early childhood program, but the size of your district would depend on whether you need a person just for early childhood or they could oversee a bigger age group, which is what ours does.
We also have a teacher leader who serves as our preschool and early childhood leader, and so that person is currently a kindergarten teacher in the district. She reaches out to students in our community for the full year before they come to kindergarten for events, story times, bus rides, and all kinds of fun things that build excitement for students starting kindergarten. She also helps to coordinate and lead the early childhood provider professional development that we do for almost 40 different early childhood providers in the region.
