San Antonio’s Pre-k program expands to 3-year-olds
Pre-k 4 SA, the city-funded early childhood education program, will expand its enrollment to include 3-year-old students and is urging San Antonio residents to apply for free or low-cost tuition.
Applications for younger students will open Monday. To qualify, families must reside in the city and children must have turned 3 by Sept. 1, 2022. The school year begins Aug. 15 and applications for 4-year-olds are already being accepted.
Families may qualify for income-based scholarships and tuition assistance.
“We’ve always shared a very important statistic about early learning, and that is that 90 percent of a child’s brain is developed by the age of 5,” Pre-k 4 SA CEIO Sarah Baray said. “We know that increasing access so that children are with us for two years will only increase the benefits that children and families have.”
The plan is to have both 4and 3-year-old students learning in the same classrooms and families will have access to the same bus transportation, family-style meals and optional extended days currently offered.
Voters in 2012 approved devoting part of the city sales tax to launch Pre-k 4 SA as a full-day pre-k for San Antonio-area families who would otherwise lack access to such programs. A 2020 election approved its extension for another eight years.
Area school districts partner with the organization, sharing part of their per-student state funding to cover their students and getting access to staff training to strengthen their own pre-k programs.
The program can host up to 2,000 students among its four education centers located in the north, east, west and south sides of the city. In-person capacity was limited to 1,000 during the pandemic, but just like area school districts, the program bounced back to fully in-person classes in the past year.
“This year we’ve opened up our enrollment fully and we have been under-enrolled, particularly in our South Center,” Baray said. “We definitely have work to do in letting families know that it’s time, especially
for young families that have not been engaged in the school system.”
“Pre-k 4 SA really set the bar,” Brenda Rosas said of her
experience with the program. “I’m glad that all three of my children were able to attend and that it was made available to us. I really don’t know where my children would be right now in school if they didn’t get that start.”
Families with an annual
household income of up to $70,000 can qualify for free tuition, and others can apply for a sliding scale tuition assistance. The organization has an online calculator where families can get a better idea of how much they might qualify for.
By expanding the program
and its financial aid opportunities, Baray said, Pre-k 4 SA is making good on promises to voters and ensuring that more families have access to highquality education regardless of income.
It also might help fill learning gaps that the pandemic has made even more evident, especially with area school districts reporting that most of their enrollment declines since 2020 have been concentrated in lower grades.