Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Early Childhood topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Early-childhood program update: CLC serves 300+ children; district reports waiting list and screening outcomes
Summary
District staff reported that the Early Childhood Learning Center serves more than 300 preschool children, the program has a waiting list for next year, and local screening data show children with prior preschool experience have lower kindergarten risk scores than children without preschool experience.
Austin Public Schools’ early-childhood staff briefed the board on programming, enrollment and screening results at the district’s Community Learning Center (CLC) and other preschool sites.
Jennifer Lawhead, community education director, said the district’s CLC currently serves more than 300 children across preschool and inclusion classrooms and conducts early-childhood screening twice monthly. Lawhead said early intervention remains a priority and that the district partners with community agencies to reach families early in a child’s development.
Staff noted a waiting list for the 2025–26 school year: presenters reported 38 families already on the list and said the program typically had as many as 50 waiting last year. Lawhead and colleagues described transportation and start-up funding as key barriers to rapid expansion; a board member estimated startup costs on the order of $200,000 to open an additional classroom.
Presenters summarized screening and assessment data, saying children who attended preschool (including district and community partner preschools) entered kindergarten this year with substantially lower rates of ‘high risk’ FAST screening results than children who had no preschool experience. In the district’s figures cited at the meeting, 47.3 percent of children with no preschool experience scored in a high-risk category while 26 percent of children who attended preschool scored high risk; conversely, about 51 percent of children who attended preschool scored in a low-risk category.
Lawhead described classroom practice and supports including McPhail music instruction, a speech-language pathologist who supports augmentative communication and a pyramid-model coaching approach to social-emotional instruction. The presenters said they already implement strategies learned through Minnesota’s early-literacy initiatives and that MTSS teams actively use attendance and behavior data to tailor interventions.
Ending: Staff asked the board to note demand for preschool services and to consider constraints such as space, start-up funding and transportation when evaluating expansion options. No board funding decision was made at the meeting.
