The Littlestown Areas School Board voted unanimously this week to fund $40,000 for a free Pre-K pilot program to be offered this summer.
Alloway Creek Elementary School principal Dr. Chip Fissel said the pilot program would help his team gather information about how the program might work in the future, and what benefits there would be for students and teachers.
“We want to give everybody a level playing field when they come into our school to help them in their initial schooling and then beyond,” said Fissel.
Fissel said curriculum was still being developed, but the program would be rooted in age-appropriate language, social and emotional development through play, and a school and home partnership. “Purposeful play is going to be a very big part of what students do within the program,” he said.
The program will be focused on 4-year-olds heading into Kindergarten in the fall who have not had any early childhood school experience as determined at registration for the 2021-22 school year.
The program will have two classes of 20 students each with two teachers in each class and is slated for late July for 4 weeks, Monday through Thursday from 9:00 a.m. to noon.
Board presiden, Dolores Nestor requested that the Pre-K team work with the board’s curriculum committee in designing the pilot program and that the data collected from it be provided to the board.
In other news Superintendent Christopher Bigger reported that all LASD staff have or received or will receive COVID-19 vaccines this week. He said the administration had received 156 requests for vaccines. Bigger credited the Lincoln Intermediate Unit for helping set up an efficient, seamless, and quick system for providing the vaccines.
Senior Class graduation is scheduled for Saturday June 4 with a rain date on June 5.
Nestor read into the record a thank you note from the LHS Future Farmers of America club. The FFA expressed their appreciation to the board for allowing them to farm 5 acres of field corn for competition in the 2020 PA Corn Growers 5-acre Corn Yield Contest. Littlestown FFA placed 4th in the South Central Region with 221.8 bushels/acre. This was the first entry into this competition by the Littlestown FFA.
The next LASD Board meeting will be on April 19 at 7:00 p.m.
Christina Grim grew up in Shippensburg, PA, Franklin County, and graduated from Shippensburg Area High School. She is an experienced interviewer, researcher, and news reporter, having worked for the Shippensburg News-Chronicle as a staff reporter during college. Driven by the desire to know the facts and answers to today’s issues, she takes seriously the importance of providing the best reporting possible. Ms. Grim earned her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications from Messiah College and has worked in her field, either in print or radio/streamed media for the last 25 years. As a single mother, she has learned that the best things in life come from hard work and multi-tasking. She is the mother of two adult children and two cats