Community Can Help Ready! for Kindergarten Program Expand

A Sumner schools program is helping children and parents in the community get prepared for kindergarten, but it’s still only serving a fraction of the kids entering Sumner schools.  

That could change with more awareness, said Laurie Sjolund, Sumner School District early learning coordinator.

Ready! for Kindergarten is free to parents in the Sumner School District who have kids ages 5 and younger. It is designed to help students reach developmental benchmarks before they enter the school system, with a focus on letters and sounds, math and social skills. 

“It provides parents with the training and the tools to be their child’s first and most important teacher. Research shows it makes a difference -- kids who enter kindergarten at grade level start ahead and stay ahead year after year,” Sjolund said.

The program started in 2007 with 50 families. Now it serves about 200 families. In a typical year, 40 to 60 kids are recent finishers of the program who are entering kindergarten in the Sumner School District. However, about 500 children start kindergarten in the district annually, Sjolund said.

Expecting more district dollars for expanding the program is unrealistic, however, as Sumner faces a shrinking budget due, in part, to reduced state funding such as for teacher salaries.

That puts expanding the program in the hands of the community in the form of donations. The Sumner Bonney Lake Education Foundation is one community organization that supports the program. People who want to donate to the program can send donations to that foundation and earmark them for Ready!, Sjolund said.

“Any donations we receive will help us expand the program to more families,” said Sjolund, adding $50 purchases the materials for the necessary kit of educational materials that families receive and that $200 pays for the kit and the other costs associated with serving a family for a full year.

Education foundation board member and Ready! volunteer Nonie Mazza said she hopes people in the community will donate and help the program expand.

“I think it’s a real asset for our community,” she said.

Fellow board member Gary Pederson also hopes to see the program offered to more families.  

“It’s just got benefits written all over it,” said Pederson, who retired as a kindergarten through grade 2 teacher in 2010 after 34 years of teaching in Sumner schools.

Pederson noted that expectations upon entering kindergarten and in the early years of school are higher than they used to be. Kids these days are expected to know letters and shapes when they come in the door, for example. That wasn’t the case when Pederson began teaching kindergarten.

“When I was teaching kindergarten we were taking naps -- that was still going on,” he said. “It was more of a social situation for these kids. Now it’s highly structured. We have lots kids reading in kindergarten already, and there’s more emphasis on reading in kindergarten than in years in the past.”

The program also helps parents get into the mindset of participating in schools and helping their children learn at home. That’s important in an era when kids are expected to perform well on standardized tests at younger and younger ages, he said.

Parents sometimes feel intimidated when it comes to participating in their children’s education or getting involved with school programs, Pederson noted. With the Ready! program, parents gain familiarity with Sumner schools and receive encouragement, support and needed tools to begin engaging in their children’s education before entering kindergarten.

“It eases the parents and kids into the educational process,” he said, “and it’s not so abrupt.”

This year’s Ready! for Kindergarten program begins Nov. 8. For more information, contact Laurie Sjolund at 891-4776.

If you want to donate to the program, send a check to the Sumner Bonney Lake Education Association and write Ready! for Kindergarten on the memo line. The foundation receives mail at 1202 Wood Ave., Sumner, WA 98390.