Clayton aims to enroll all youngsters in pre-K

Expansion means program available to any parent.

Denise Stevens can easily tell if a child has had the ben- efit of pre-kindergarten edu- cation.

Children with a pre-K back- ground are usually more communicative and independent because they have learned to interact with people outside of their tight circle of fam- ily and friends, said Stevens, principal of Clayton County’s Kemp Primary School.

That’s the opposite of chil- dren who didn’t attend pre-K. Those children often struggle with spelling their names or with speech, she said.

The Clayton County school system is trying to change that. Superintendent Morcease Beasley has been barnstorming the county over the past several weeks to let par- ents know that pre-K, which in the past has been offered mainly through a lottery system, will now be available to any parent who wishes to help a child get a head start.

That’s important to the county. Historically, Clayton has had the highest unemployment rate in metro Atlanta and a disproportionate percentage of students on free- and-reduced lunch because of overall lower family incomes. Getting students educated ear- lier could improve test scores and make Clayton more com- petitive as a destination for families and jobs.

“If we can get our kids in pre-K in Clayton County, we will be one of the highest per- forming in this state and in this nation,” Beasley told the Clayton County Commission in earlier December in a pitch for pre-K.

The expan s ion will be funded by adding federal COVID-19 funding and local money to the allotment the district gets from the state for pre-K.

“Clayton County Public Schools has an average of 3,600 kindergartners and we currently serve around 1,000 pre-K students,” Beasley said in an email. “We would like to see increases every year until we close the gap between the number of pre-K and kinder- garten students.

“This may take several years given we must convince parents to take advantage of preK,” he said.

The push comes as pre-K and kindergarten enrollment is up about 7% in Georgia, according to state department of education figures. That is a turnaround from last year when parents kept pre-K and kindergarten students out of school. In Georgia, children are not required to attend school until the first grade.