Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2012 - 14

Preschooler Hylene Holguin plays with dolls in a duallanguage classroom at the Ignacio Cruz Early Childhood Center in Perth Amboy. In the class, pupils alternate between Spanish and English every other week.

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ilies—particularly those headed by immigrant parents—may not be aware that their children are eligible to take part, she adds. “Because of language issues, immigrant families tend to be less aware of these programs and that their children are eligible to participate in them,” Meléndez says. “And if they do know about the resources available to help them, such as subsidies, they might be less willing or able to provide the types of documentation that the programs require for enrollment.” Some parents who do not speak English may be wary about enrolling children as young as 3 in programs that do not have Spanish-speaking teachers or staff members, and in cities and towns where immigrant communities are newer, ﬁnding bilingual preschool workers can be hard, Meléndez says. “Any parent would be hesitant to drop off their young kids with a provider who they can’t communicate with,” says Raul González, the

director of legislative affairs for the National Council of La Raza, a Washington-based civil rights and advocacy group for Hispanics. “I think a key piece of improving the quality options for Latinos is growing the number of providers who speak Spanish.” Access to preschool is less of an issue for parents in Perth Amboy, which, despite its poverty, has invested heavily in its earlychildhood programs over the past decade. The city is one of 31 high-poverty communities in New Jersey that have been under a state supreme court mandate since 1998 to provide free, high-quality preschool to poor children and have received generous state funding to do so. To comply with that ruling in the long-running Abbott v. Burke school finance case, New Jersey dramatically expanded its public preschool program.

guaranteed a space; most 3-yearolds are also accommodated. This school year, the district had a very small waiting list of 3-year-olds. “We want to serve everyone, and if we can get them all at 3, it’s even better,” Sperlazza says. A majority of the city’s preschoolers are Hispanic, although they come from a diverse array of backgrounds. Children from the Dominican Republic or of Dominican descent are the largest slice of the population, followed by students of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin or descent. More than half start preschool

with little or no English oral skills. Every classroom has either a bilingual lead teacher or an assistant teacher who can speak Spanish. The district also is offering duallanguage instruction in a growing number of its preschool classrooms. All preschool teachers in Perth Amboy’s programs—even those who work for the providers that partner with the district—hold bachelor’s degrees and certiﬁcates in early-childhood education, as required by the state for all the Abbott school districts. Paraeducators must have at least 60 hours of col-

“Any parent would be hesitant to drop off their young kids with a provider who they can’t communicate with.”
Raul González
National Council of La Raza

Enrollment Expands
Over the past decade, Perth Amboy’s preschool program has grown from 10 part-time classrooms serving only 4-year-olds to 100 classrooms serving 3- and 4-year-olds for a full day, Sperlazza says. The school district directly operates four of eight such programs and has partnered with four outside providers to increase capacity. Under state rules, no preschool class can exceed 15 children. Every 4-year-old who enrolls is

lege credits as well. Master teachers employed by the district work closely with the private centers to ensure the state’s standards are met. Strict rules govern how much time should be devoted to play during a day: 210 minutes, also state-mandated. The preschools all use Creative Curriculum, a commercial program that organizes the preschool classroom and its activities around a unit of study that stretches across multiple weeks. At the Acelero Head Start Center here, a classroom of 4-year-olds has been learning about music. The teacher and children have created an elaborate play area with a “sound booth” they made out of a cardboard box where they can “record” themselves singing; the area has a toy drum kit and guitar, other instruments, and a microphone fashioned from a cardboard toilet paper roll and aluminum foil. In a neighboring classroom of 3-year-olds, children learning about dough created a bakery assembly line and ovens made of cardboard and shoeboxes where they can pretend to bake bread or make pizza. Their unit of study included a visit to a local bakery and a project they worked on to create a photo album that documented their ﬁeld trip. “We want it to go deep with our kids,” Sperlazza says of lessons the center provides. In an ongoing study of the longitudinal effects of New Jersey’s public preschool expansion in the

EDUCATION WEEK | June 7, 2012

Emile Wamsteker for Education Week

Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2012

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