Sumner School District still requires students to be 5 years old before enrolling in kindergarten, but a program is placing a new emphasis on getting an early academic start.

The early learning division of the district launched a pilot program in the summer of 2010 called JumpStart. Its mission: to improve the performance of at-risk incoming kindergartners.

Early Learning Coordinator Laurie Sjolund presented an overview of early learning, and primarily JumpStart, to the school board in a three-part series, focusing on early learning theory, the Sumner district’s JumpStart program format, and results out of the district, respectively.

The latter presentation illustrated that in its pilot year, JumpStart students who had tested low during spring registration had been brought up to or above their expected scores for entry into kindergarten.

Sjolund sat down with the Courier-Herald to discuss the program.

Courier-Herald: What are the programs you offer in the Early Learning program? I know you have JumpStart and Ready! For Kindergarten, but when did those start?

Laurie Sjolund: Those are two of the programs we have. We do have ongoing classes as well, but those are our two main classes. We also have classes for parents, child care providers. We (the district) started our official early learning work with our first early learning plan in 2006. That was about the same time our early learning linkatures group started. Of course, there have always been those types of programs here, but they existed in separately, decentralized. This last summer was first time we offered Jumpstart as a pilot program, and we do plan on offering it again.

CH: What’s the associated cost of those programs?

LS: There is a cost for Ready! We provide it free to Sumner School District families, and charge a fee for out-of-district families. It’s $50 a class. Jumpstart we only offer to incoming kindergartners who were tested and found to be in need of the program based on either the reading score, the math score, or both.

CH: Who are the target groups?

LS: The Ready! parent program is for parents of children from prenatal to the age that they’re about to enter kindergarten, so we do offer that to those parents. In addition to other classes, ongoing classes that we have are focused on parenting and parenting techniques. Children up to 3rd grade are our target. Also, we are offering a Play & Learn group for families in starting in early January.

CH: How are candidates identified? Are they self-selected?

LS: In Sumner we have a spring screening for students who register for kindergarten. We invite students to (the JumpStart) program if their score in reading, math, or both are in the bottom quartile of scores, so that we can help them bring those scores up and be at an even level with their peers once they begin school.

CH: What’s the difference from preschool?

LS: What we focus on in the JumpStart program is to be a transition from the preschool experience to a kindergarten classroom routine. This year it was taught by a kindergarten and preschool teacher. Some of the students coming in hadn’t experienced a preschool setting. Some of them had experienced a preschool setting. So we really had gotten all levels of early learning experience.

CH: What skills are reinforced and how? I remember from your presentations that the skills highlighted were reading comprehension, letter recognition, number recognition…

LS: Definitely those were highlighted, as well as listening to stories and retaining information learned from them. Teachers really designed the program. The goal is to have as much basic readiness and skills development as possible. Name recognition was huge, identifying letters in names, signing, real basic literacy, early literacy and early math. Counting. I believe they did some geometry in the form of shape identification. It was really basic; just sorting and classifying shapes.

CH: What skills are reinforced among parents in the Ready! program?

LS: We based the Ready! program on certain targets, which are literacy, math and social/emotional development targets. About half the alphabet letters and sounds, recognizing rhyme, alliteration, enjoying stories, math, being able to count to 20. Using comparison words, bigger, smaller, position words even. Social/emotional targets really focus on following simple directions. Really the philosophy behind Ready! is “playing with a purpose for five minutes a day,” because play is a great way to help your child develop. That can include counting with your child, looking at letters and signs in your environment. Reading with your child 20 minutes a day is key for literacy development.

CH: Where does funding for the Early Learning program come from?

LS: It’s from a mix of Sumner School District’s early learning funding, partnership with Sumner and Bonney Lake, as well as a grant from the Milgard Foundation.

Sjolund urged parents curious about the Early Learning program to call 253-891-4563 or write laurie_sjolund@sumnersd.org.