News Release NPPSD
North Platte, Neb. – North Platte Public Schools is extremely excited to have been awarded a $191,451 grant from the Early Childhood Education Grant Program.
This grant will allow NPPS to expand our preschool offerings for students. During the 19-20 school year, we piloted a full-day preschool classroom at Buffalo Elementary. This classroom was extremely successful in meeting the needs of students and families. Therefore, we wrote this grant to expand the full-day opportunities for students in North Platte.
Through the Communities for Kids initiative, we had surveyed families in North Platte and the results of this survey showed that families wanted more full-day preschool options for four-year-olds.
Therefore, a group of educators from North Platte Public Schools which included the 5 preschool teachers, the preschool facilitator, and the special education director all worked together to write this grant to be able to better meet the needs of this community.
Because of his grant, we will be able to offer 3 additional full-day sections. One of these full-day classrooms will be located at Washington Elementary, and two of these classrooms will be at the Buffalo Early Learning Center.
With the grant funding, we were awarded start-up funds. Therefore, we will be able to purchase supplies and materials for these classrooms due to the expansion as well as some playground equipment.
When we wrote the grant, we also included a three-year-old classroom in with the plan since that was an area of need our community identified. Unfortunately, this portion of the grant application was not funded, so we will not be having a 3-year old preschool classroom next year. The state prioritizes its funding to go to 4-year olds.
We are super excited about the opportunities we will be able to provide for families next year, and we have many great ideas for improving the quality of services provided to preschool age students.
The preschool teachers have worked together to select a new curriculum that we will begin to implement next year. After a selection process, the teachers selected Big Day for the Pre-K which aligns with our Journeys curriculum that the elementaries use. The preschool teachers will also continue implementing the Pyramid model.
This is an evidence-based model that helps our teachers ensure that they are meeting the social and emotional needs of our students. This model aligns with the PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports) model that all schools throughout our district implement. The preschool teachers have chosen to rebrand their program, and the district’s preschool program will now be called the Bullpup Preschool.
In addition to these 3-full-day classrooms, the district will still be offering morning and afternoon half-day sessions at both Jefferson and Osgood. Some of our sections for next year are already full, but there are still full-day openings left at the Buffalo Early Learning Center, and we have half-day openings at Osgood Elementary in the afternoons and Jefferson Elementary for both the morning and afternoon sections. If your child will be 4 before July 31st, please consider registering them for this great opportunity. To register your child, you can go to www.nppsd.org and click on the new student registration tab.
More information about this 2020-2021 Early Childhood State Grant is available here: https://meeting.sparqdata.com/Documents/FileViewerOrPublic/152?file=d16d02ff-8853-45c5-8104-8cbecf876e33&isFromMeeting=True