Clark County expands pre‑K access countywide

Although the gov­er­nor wasn’t able to per­suade Kentucky’s state leg­is­la­ture to fund his pro­pos­al for uni­ver­sal pre-kinder­garten for 4‑year-olds in the state, Clark County is mov­ing for­ward with its own plan. 

“Going into next year,” Superintendent Dustin Howard said, “Clark County Public Schools will be the first dis­trict in Kentucky to pro­vide uni­ver­sal pre‑K to any fam­i­ly that wants it in Clark County.” 

Howard made those remarks dur­ing the Clark County Chamber of Commerce’s Community Connection event at the Cardinal Community Center on June 3. 

“You will no longer have to qual­i­fy,” Howard told the audience. 

The pro­gram will be open to all 4‑year-olds regard­less of dis­abil­i­ty or fam­i­ly income, and fees will be on a slid­ing scale based on a family’s abil­i­ty to pay. 

Howard lat­er said the aver­age cost to par­ents would be under $25 per day. 

“It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly free, but it is based on your income,” Howard said, and he added that it is prob­a­bly more afford­able than any local child care center. 

The super­in­ten­dent said the school sys­tem has been “cre­ative in estab­lish­ing … rev­enue sources” for the pre-kinder­garten pro­gram, includ­ing trans­fer­ring $350,000 from the Aftercare program. 

Although Gov. Andy Beshear recent­ly issued an exec­u­tive order for a uni­ver­sal pre‑K pilot pro­gram in Robertson and Rockcastle coun­ties using already allo­cat­ed eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment funds, Clark County’s pro­gram was already in the works. 

“We were way ahead of that because I don’t wait on politi­cians to get things mov­ing,” Howard said. 

The super­in­ten­dent made the rev­e­la­tion at anoth­er cham­ber event in January at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, but he offered few details at the time. 

The super­in­ten­dent said that two years ago, the pre-kinder­garten pro­gram had about 300 chil­dren, and last year there were 380. He expects to reach capac­i­ty at 450 when school resumes in the fall. Although the pro­gram is intend­ed for 4‑year-olds, it will accept some 3‑year-olds that qual­i­fy through Head Start, Howard said. 

“There’s still time to sign up,” he noted. 

Those who are inter­est­ed may con­tact Clark County Preschool Principal Jill Blanton at jill.blanton@clark.kyschools.us 

Howard said that mak­ing kids “kinder­garten-ready” helps them suc­ceed lat­er and reduces the need for remediation. 

Other successes 

“We are focused on grow­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers and cit­i­zens in Winchester and Clark County,” Howard told his audience. 

One of the goals, he said, is for stu­dents to have such a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence in the local school sys­tem that when they “go out into the world” and begin their careers, they will choose to come back home to work and raise their own chil­dren because they want them to have the same expe­ri­ence they had. 

The Clark County School District has about 5,600 stu­dents, up 200 from last year, and Howard said he expects that num­ber to be even high­er next year. 

“We’re by far the biggest employ­er in the dis­trict, with 1,300 employ­ees,” he said. 

The dis­trict main­tains 1.1 mil­lion square feet of build­ing space and mows about 300 acres of grass. Its bus dri­vers log 3,500 miles per day. The food ser­vice pro­vides more than 60,000 break­fasts and lunch­es each year at a cost of $2 million. 

Inflation has proven a chal­lenge for the bud­get, includ­ing big spikes in the costs of insur­ance and diesel fuel, “but I think we’re com­mit­ted,” along with the school board, to “nav­i­gate that togeth­er,” the super­in­ten­dent said. 

Some of the oth­er high­lights Howard mentioned: 

• The school dis­trict has reduced its stu­dent-to-teacher ratio to 21–1 in kinder­garten through third grade. 
• It has made a big invest­ment in lit­er­a­cy, includ­ing its Flight Academy pro­gram, which has received hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from the Greater Clark Foundation. The pro­gram con­tin­ues through the summer. 
• The dis­trict has gone from retain­ing about 70 per­cent of its staff three years ago to retain­ing well over 90 per­cent this year.
• The new Hannah McClure Cardinal Learning Center has been busy host­ing learn­ing camps. Two weeks ago, the dis­trict part­nered with the Winchester-Clark County Industrial Park on a pro­gram for 60 mid­dle school girls to learn more about sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and engi­neer­ing. Last week it host­ed the­ater and art camps.
• The schools estab­lished a bul­ly­ing task force, and report­ed inci­dents are down 50 percent. 
• The district’s sum­mer food pro­gram on June 2 dis­trib­uted 10,000 meals in about 90 min­utes. Employees and vol­un­teers dis­trib­uted 10-day meal pack­ets to stu­dents. That will con­tin­ue through­out the summer. 
• George Rogers Clark High School’s grad­u­a­tion rate is now over 97 per­cent, which is good, Howard said.
• District account­abil­i­ty scores have reached their high­est lev­el since before the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and George Rogers Clark High School is among the top-per­form­ing schools in the state.
• GRC pro­vides more than 80 dual-cred­it cours­es, which allow stu­dents to earn col­lege cred­it for tak­ing advanced high school class­es, and pro­vid­ed cred­its to near­ly 1,000 kids this year, includ­ing 531 at Bluegrass Community and Technical College alone. “One fam­i­ly emailed me and said they saved $35,000 because their kids grad­u­at­ed with so many col­lege cred­its,” Howard commented. 
• Fifty-five per­cent of GRC stu­dents take Advanced Placement class­es, which also give stu­dents the chance to tack­le col­lege-lev­el work and earn cred­it and placement.
• The school dis­trict has a large num­ber of career path­way pro­grams, includ­ing ani­mal and plant sci­ence, e‑commerce, culi­nary arts, video pro­duc­tion, health sci­ence, nurs­ing, car­pen­try, weld­ing, auto­mo­tive main­te­nance, and a new one: con­struc­tion man­age­ment. Many stu­dents earn indus­try cer­ti­fi­ca­tions.  Howard urged busi­ness­peo­ple in the room to reach out to the school dis­trict to get involved in the path­ways program. 
• Through the Cardinal Virtual Academy, Howard said, home­school and pri­vate school stu­dents can also par­tic­i­pate in career path­ways, dis­trict cours­es, extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, and ath­let­ic programs. 

Howard said the dis­trict has great col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al pri­vate schools, includ­ing St. Agatha Academy, Calvary Christian, and Grace Bible. 

“We’ve actu­al­ly expand­ed how we can go to school now,” Howard said. 

Howard also talked about the school sys­tem’s great suc­cess­es in athletics. 

“Does any­body know that we won two state cham­pi­onships this year?” he joked, draw­ing laugh­ter from the audience. 

He was refer­ring to George Rogers Clark as the first high school in near­ly a cen­tu­ry to win state bas­ket­ball cham­pi­onships by both its girls’ and boys’ teams in the same year. 

“That does not hap­pen with­out our com­mu­ni­ty,” he said, explain­ing that the ath­letes feed off the ener­gy from their loy­al fans, whom he called the Cardinal Caravan. “If we didn’t have the com­mu­ni­ty we have, we would not be able to cel­e­brate that, because our kids can­not do it alone. They need us.” 

GRC has won oth­er recent state cham­pi­onships as well, he said, and men­tioned his daugh­ter, Bailey Howard, who has won four state titles in track and field events in the last two years, includ­ing a state record in pole vault­ing this year. 

Howard men­tioned that the girls’ soft­ball team was com­pet­ing in the state tour­na­ment the fol­low­ing week­end and urged com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to come out and cheer them on.