The PISD board of trustees has in recent weeks heard presentations from district staff laying out the facilities needs associated with expanding the district’s pre-K program. Although a timeline for action has not been set, a district task force will monitor the demand for pre-K in the district and provide updates to the trustees as needed.
“As we gather data on enrollment this year, and where the program is in constant demand, we will look into how to expand in the future,” Suzana Spina, PISD director of early childhood, said in a statement. “The school board has asked to be kept informed on the growth and needs of the program.”
The planned expansion comes as Plano’s population of students from low-income households continues a steady rise that dates back decades. Even in today’s relatively favorable economy, 3 in 10 students in Plano ISD come from economically disadvantaged families, according to the district. In 1995, that number was less than 1 in 10.
The Texas Education Agency defines an “economically disadvantaged” student as one who is “eligible for free or reduced-price meals under the National School Lunch and Child Nutrition Program.”
For households of two, federal guidelines state a family with $30,451 of income or less is eligible for reduced lunch. The median 2017 household income for a two-person family in Plano was roughly $92,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
In total, the district’s half-day or full-day pre-K programs served 1,861 students last school year, including 795 identified as economically disadvantaged.
The district also maintains a waiting list for 3- and 4-year-olds who do not make the first round of enrollment. Parents can apply to add their children to the waiting list at any point during the school year, according to the district website.
Closing gaps in outcomes
One of the district’s central premises is that placing more students in pre-K programs will reduce historic gaps in educational outcomes for students from low-income families.
“There is a lot of research out there that shows the benefits of pre-K, especially for students who are learning a second language or also students who are from economically disadvantaged homes,” Katrina Hasley, the district’s assistant superintendent for academic services, told PISD trustees in August.
The district’s belief in the benefits of pre-K is informed in part by a TEA study published last year that concluded student kindergarten readiness rates were 16 percent higher if they attended pre-K than those who did not. Students who attended pre-K were also at an advantage over their classmates at the third-grade reading level and were 7 percent more likely to enroll in college.
Across the state of Texas, students from low-income families are at a disadvantage relative to their peers in the state’s achievement assessments.
This is true also in PISD, where students classified as economically disadvantaged have lagged behind the district as a whole in the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. The STAAR test, as it is more commonly known, provides the state with a measure of student learning for each grade level in various subjects, from reading and mathematics to history and social studies.
In the 2015-16 school year, the most recent year for which breakdowns of economically disadvantaged student scores were available, PISD students passed 86 percent of their STAAR examinations. The same year, economically disadvantaged PISD students passed 70 percent of their STAAR exams.
This gap exists for each year going back to at least the 1994-95 school year. Although the state has had three different assessment systems in that time—including TAAS and TAKS, the precursors to STAAR—economically disadvantaged students were marked with lower educational outcomes by all three tests. Over the lifetime of each test, however, the gaps in Plano ISD between students from wealthier and poorer families became less pronounced.
It is unclear to the district why these educational gaps have closed, in part because the district has not yet conducted an in-depth study on the same group of students over multiple years to gauge the effect of programs like pre-K on educational outcomes.
“We are so early in our implementation of the full-day classes that we do not yet have data to analyze,” Spina said. “We do plan to track the academic success of students who participate in [pre-K] as they progress through the years in school. Over time, we will be able to gather substantial data to analyze.”
Facilities options
The district’s ultimate goal is to expand its full-day pre-K program so it has the capacity to serve 70 percent of PISD children classified as economically disadvantaged.
The district arrived at this target after consulting with other school districts with more established pre-K programs that—like PISD’s—are located at district facilities like elementary schools or designated early education schools.
The district has offered full-day pre-K programs since the 2016-17 school year. Last year, the district served 443 economically disadvantaged students in full-time pre-K, and another 105 economically disadvantaged students in the district’s full-day Head Start program for 4 year olds. In total, the two programs served just under half of the estimated number of economically disadvantaged students in 2017-18, according to PISD.
Meeting the target will require recruiting another 275 children from low-income families each year. While the district has the space to serve the families interested in pre-K for now, it will need to expand facilities in the future to meet its target.
District staff members have presented several options to trustees for expanding the pre-K program capacity. The trustees could eventually choose to increase pre-K class sizes in existing classrooms; make use of empty classrooms at existing elementary school campuses; expand the district’s three existing early childhood schools; or construct a fourth early childhood school. The district could use a combination of these options to reach its full capacity target.
District staff are also open to other options to reach even higher than the 70 percent target, Susan Modisette, assistant superintendent for campus services, told trustees in August.
