OXFORD — Enrollment for the Waterford Memorial School’s new preschool program may be just the boost the elementary school needs to keep the small community school on track.
“The enrollment is exceeding our expectations,” said Oxford Hills School District Superintendent Rick Colpitts of the 17 applications the school has received for the program that was approved by the Department of Education several weeks ago. “It’s phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal.”
Colpitts said Tuesday that the enrollment figures were particularly positive because the Waterford school showed a sharp decline in enrollment for the coming school year that has necessitated combining a kindergarten and grade-one classroom as well as a grades 2 and 3 classroom.
In kindergarten there are only four or five children enrolled for the coming school year, Colpitts said.
Because of the low enrollment numbers and the fear that the student enrollment numbers may not support a community school in Waterford in the future, educators began to look at having a preschool, he said.
“When we saw the kindergarten enrollment looked so low, it raised concerns so we asked the principal to go to known families” (to see if they would participate in a preschool program), Colpitts said.
“That helps to boost Waterford school enrollment that pays for itself in a year,” Colpitts said of the state aid that is received based in part on enrollment figures.
Because the ratio in that classroom is 13 students to one teacher, a certified preschool teacher has been hired. The school district will provide transportation for the Waterford preschool students who will attend three days a week all day.
“We’ll be able to maintain it in the long run because now we’ll see 17 students in the kindergarten class,” he said of the school’s future.
The program will be added to the two other new preschool programs at Oxford and Guy E. Rowe elementary schools this fall that are being provided through Community Concepts. The Paris Elementary School pre-kindergarten program, that was a pilot program through a partnership with Community Concepts, has been in place for more than four years and will continue this fall.
The two new programs at the Rowe school in Norway and Oxford Elementary School will be paid for through Community Concepts with the school district providing the in kind space, Colpitts said. Based on enrollment figures so far, the programs have been expanded and non-Head Start students will be able to participate.
“It’s been a great partnership with Community Concepts,” Colpitts said of the preschool programs that educators say are enabling students to enter kindergarten further along academically.
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