Park City School District has 217 students enrolled in its four preschools, Jeremy Ranch, McPolin, Parley’s Park and Trailside, this year. That’s up from 154 students in the fall of 2024 and slightly higher than last year’s 208.
Park City School District Preschool Director and Coordinator Missy Tschabrun said enrollment could still increase because the district is continuing to accept students.
This year, the district is also implementing the Frog Street curriculum. The national preschool program focuses on early academic and social-emotional development.
“Our teachers are learning a lot about the curriculum,” Tschabrun said. “They finally, around this week, they got their feet underneath them. They’re really starting to feel comfortable with the curriculum, and the kids are really starting to love it. It is amazing what a frog puppet can do for pre-K.”
She said the curriculum includes bilingual materials and hands-on activities, like a frog puppet named Fernando that teachers use for vocabulary and math lessons.
Last year, about 90% of Park City preschoolers met state pre-kindergarten entry and exit profile, or the PEEP, literacy and math benchmarks.
“The PEEP is really one-on-one with the teacher and the student, and it’s, ‘Point to the rectangle, point to the square,’ doing your colors, your numbers. ‘Do you know the sounds of your letters? Do you know your ABCs?’”
Tschaburn said while the bulk of the district’s preschoolers are 86% proficient in literacy and 88% in numeracy, 61% of multilingual learners met the standard.
She said the district has created a five-year plan to narrow the gap.
“Next year we're really going to be looking at labeling everything in the classroom with English and Spanish,” she said. “And really looking at the Frog Street curriculum and making sure there's hands-on things for our MLL kids.”
Tschaburn said next steps will include boosting oral-language support to better prepare students for kindergarten.
She said the long-term goal is for all multilingual learners to meet the mark.
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