SALEM, Va. – Three-year-old Josiah Rickman has lots of questions and lots of energy — and this fall, he’s headed to preschool.
“He loves to learn,” Josiah’s mom Desarae Rogers said.
Rogers said he’s her first kid headed to preschool, and they’ve been thinking about preschool for over a year.
“As soon as he turned two and he could really get sentences out, he was ready to go to school. That’s all he’s been talking about,” Rogers said.
They live in Salem, and Wednesday applied for the Virginia Preschool Initiative as a part of a registration event aimed at getting kids excited and registered for preschool and kindergarten.
The event helped get students excited for school, with crafts and activities, their own “signing day” picture opportunity, and visits from all of the elementary schools’ mascots.
Megan Crew is the division coordinator for state and federal programs for Salem City Schools and said they’re doing everything they can to give families access to preschool.
“We make preschool accessible to families who may not otherwise be able to afford preschool,” Crew said.
The Virginia Preschool Initiative is a federally funded program, and something lawmakers across the commonwealth have pushed to expand.
The General Assembly proposes over $157 million a year for the program.
Crew tells 10 News Salem has worked to expand over the past few years — currently offering 78 students slots.
“We say the sky’s the limit - but we’ve gone to all four schools. Could we add more classes? Absolutely. I’d love to be able to expand,” Crew said.
The program does have a few qualifying requirements — either automatic qualifiers or local qualifiers, which allows the schools to look more at their local needs.
“The state will look at our kindergarten numbers each spring and then offer us a certain allocation of spots for the next fall. Families that are single parents, or families that were affected by COVID-19 negatively, so we can look at those criteria, as well as some automatic criteria which are relative to the poverty line, whether a child has an IEP, etc.,” Crew said.
Crew agrees with the Virginia Board of Education, which has previously spoken about the crucial need for early childhood learning.
“We’re really looking at our ELD’s which are our early development standards, which tells us cognitively and socially children need to be with peers, interacting and having valuable discussions with their peers,” Crew said.
For Josiah, Rogers hopes to give him a leg up.
“It’s really important because he’s young, he gets to start early, so a head start,” Rogers said.
