Next deadline nears for getting kids into Colorado's free preschool program: What to know
In the initial rollout of Colorado's Universal Preschool program, nearly 19,000 families have accepted the matches with providers they were offered, state officials said.
After initially extending deadlines to give families additional time to apply for the 30,000 slots available, matches were offered April 26 and, for those who accepted, finalized May 10.
The application deadline for the second round is 5 p.m. Wednesday, May 17, and families will be able to accept matches offered through June 1, said Dawn Odean, the state’s program director for universal preschool. Applications can be filled out online at upk.colorado.gov.
Here's what to know as the program rollout continues:
Who is eligible for free preschool?
The program covers the cost of up to 15 hours of preschool per week for all Colorado children for one school year prior to entering kindergarten and up to 30 hours for those who meet certain income qualifications.
Families of 3-year-olds with a qualifying factor are also eligible but only through programs run by a school district. These qualifying factors are:
belonging to a family with a household income below 270% of the federal poverty guideline
being on an individualized education program
being a dual-language learner
being homeless
being in foster or kinship care
How many slots are still available?
Larimer County has roughly 2,500 slots available from more than 100 providers, said Logan Mansanarez, the universal pre-K manager for the Early Childhood Council of Larimer County, the local coordinating agency for the state program.
A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, which oversees the UPK program, said 18,986 families accepted a match in the first round of the process that ended May 10.
The overwhelming majority of families (22,087 of 24,743) who filled out applications were matched with their top choice, state officials said in a news release late last month, although 3,101 of those families did not accept those placements prior to the deadline.
Those slots have been released to be filled in future rounds.
How many families didn't accept their matches?
Overall, 5,757 families did not accept their matches, CDEC spokesperson Hope Shuler wrote in an email Friday. A breakdown on how many of those families declined their match and how many didn’t respond at all was not available. Some of those families selected only one provider on their applications, state officials said in the news release, so there was no second- or third-choice option to match them with. Families can rank order up to five providers on their applications, and they can go back in and make changes right up until the deadline for each round of the matching process, Odean said.
Those who decline the matches that are offered can submit new choices and go through the next round.
More: What to know about Colorado's free preschool for 4-year-olds
How many applications are in?
About 32,000 families had completed applications as of May 9, Odean said. State funding for the initial year will cover about 30,000 students — less than half of the estimated 62,000 eligible children.
Statewide, providers have made about 50,000 slots available through more than 1,800 providers, Odean said.
How much is the state paying providers?
Payment to providers varies across the state, Odean said, based on a variety of local economic conditions. But the payments average out to about $6,000 for the school year.
Three local providers said the rates the state is paying are comparable to what they would normally charge for 4- and 5-year-olds in their preschools.
“I think the amount they came up with is good,” said Anne Lance, executive director of Teaching Tree Early Childhood Learning Center, which has facilities in both Fort Collins and Loveland.
Most families, she said, need to have their children in day care well beyond the 15 hours a week the state is picking up the tab for, and she’s still working on setting rates for those additional hours. Some families will qualify for 30 hours a week, based on financial need, Odean said.
How will payment be made?
The state will pay providers upfront, either quarterly or monthly, for each student in the program, Odean said. Adjustments for students who give up spots or slots that go unfilled will be made after the fact.
What factors will help get a family matched with a desired provider?
Continuity of care is being prioritized in the matching process, officials said, so children already enrolled with a participating provider are given priority and, provided their family listed the current provider as their top choice, a spot with that provider before it is offered to anyone else.
Children of employees of a specific provider are also given weighted priority, as are siblings of children already enrolled with a specific provider. A YouTube video the state prepared explains how the matching process works.
The computerized matching process then fills remaining slots randomly based on the priority selections families have made, Odean said.
How many slots can a provider offer?
Providers are allowed “to fill their classrooms based on their licensed capacity,” Odean said. Although Colorado’s previous preschool program limited capacity to a maximum of eight students per adult, UPK allows for but does not require larger class sizes, she said.
That allows providers to add capacity up to their licensed limit without increasing their overhead costs, she said, or to continue operating at a lower capacity if they prefer.
Will children be bumped from their existing providers?
In theory, that could happen, Odean said, but it’s highly unlikely.
Really, the only way that should happen, she said, is if the provider is reducing the number of spots in its program that are available for children in the year prior to entering kindergarten, generally 4-year-olds, or hiring so many new staff members with more qualifying children of their own than the program can accommodate.
“That’s been the No. 1 concern ... parents were worried they’d get booted from their current spot,” said Christina Taylor, chief executive officer of the Early Childhood Council of Larimer County. “I can say the state’s process really does want to prioritize that continuity of care, so the intent is not to kick families out of the spots they already have.”
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If that does happen, Taylor said, families should contact their local coordinating organization to advocate on their behalf.
“That’s what we’re here for, to provide that support and reassurance and advocacy if needed, because we don’t want families to get the short end of the stick in this,” she said. “That’s not the point of UPK.”
What geographical considerations are taken into account?
None, Odean said, except for families choosing programs run by local school districts, which might be open only to those living within that district’s boundaries.
Otherwise, families can select providers in cities and counties other than where they live or work without impacting their chances of receiving a match with those providers, she said.
“Families are able to choose their providers based on what works for them,” she said. “Some folks we know are choosing to be close to home, some are choosing to be close to work. That can cross county lines, that could cross (local coordinating organization) lines, and since it’s a state program, they’re able to do that. Some families are choosing to be close to Grandma’s house, since Grandma brings them or picks them up, and we wanted to allow for that flexibility to really ensure we’re meeting families’ needs.”
Why are some providers offering fewer than 15 hours?
Some providers are being allowed to provide as few as 10 hours of preschool instruction in the first year of the new program to give them time to make the necessary adjustments to ramp up to 15 hours. Those exemptions have generally been made for local school districts, which have existing early childhood care programs designed for 10 hours of instruction a week, or part-time programs that were previously providing fewer than 10 hours of instruction a week.
Thompson Valley Preschool, a private provider in Loveland, is increasing its instruction time from 7½ hours a week to 10 to participate in UPK, Executive Director Gail Yant said. And to do that, the school had to reduce the number of classes available for its 3- and 4-year-olds, from four to three, and extend its school year by two additional weeks.
“We’re going to try this for a year and see how it goes,” Yant said Friday.
What are local providers saying about the rollout?
The biggest concern local providers have is with the uncertainty of how the first-year program will actually work, they said Friday.
“Really, I feel like with this whole process, we’re building the plane while we’re flying,” Lance said. “And we have to because we have to get these spaces secured and filled up. But I don’t feel all the information is always there to get all the answers we need.”
Lance’s Teaching Tree Early Childhood Learning Center is licensed to serve about 250 children at its two locations, Lance said. It made all 96 slots available for 4-year-olds in Fort Collins and 12 in Loveland for those in the UPK program but filled only 38 in the first round of the matching process despite having 53 continuing students who are eligible and 32 others on a waiting list.
That’s a big concern, she said, given that she usually fills most slots for the following school year when registration begins in January.
“We’re not even halfway there,” she said. “That makes me a little nervous.”
Lance said the center normally does targeted marketing when it’s worried it might fall below capacity, but she’s not really able to do that for the 4-year-olds this year.
“Parents have to navigate the system and get applied at the right time,” she said. “That process, I feel, could be challenging for some families that don’t have access, and many times those families are the ones that need the care the most. That’s my fear ... that we’re missing the boat with the families that need it the most, and they’re going to fall through the cracks, and that’s something our community can’t afford to do.
“I’m hopeful that after the second round, our numbers will go up quite a bit.”
Joseph Ziegler, education director for the El Nidito Early Childhood Program at Fort Collins’ La Familia Center, said the application process “has been confusing” for families who don’t necessarily know what they’re signing up for, how many hours the program will cover and whether their children will possibly be bumped to make room for others.
As a provider, he wasn’t sure how many slots he could or should offer to “ensure that all of our families we currently have that qualify would be able to access it at our site,” he said.
“I would say there have definitely been some bumps in the road,” Ziegler said. “Obviously, it’s a huge program and very complicated, and that’s to be expected in the first year of anything like that.”
La Familia, he said, has been involved for a long time in a lot of state- and federal-run programs and has a lot of people who regularly help families navigate those programs to access the available resources.
“There’s a lot of sites and programs that don’t have that, and if this is confusing for us and confusing for the school districts, I can only imagine the difficulty sites that haven’t done these programs before are having,” Ziegler said.
El Nidito wound up offering 14 spots through the UPK program, he said, to ensure its preschool program still had space for 3-year-olds, too, he said. Ten of those spots were filled in the first round of the matching process, leaving four available for additional rounds.
Thompson Valley Preschool also struggled to figure out how many slots it could make available in the UPK program while continuing to provide preschool education for 3-year-olds, too, Yant said.
The school settled on 47, she said, leaving a 48th spot open for a continuing student who will be 5 and possibly too old to qualify.
Thirty-two of those spots were filled in the first round of the matching process, she said — all by continuing students who had already registered and paid registration fees in January. Families, she said, generally want to tour facilities and meet staff before selecting a program, and then want to secure a spot as soon as they find the right fit.
“All of our people registered, paid their registration fee with us and then went back out and applied through UPK,” she said.
The remaining 15 slots, she said, will be filled by students in the program who are new to her school.
She’s concerned about additional requirements, curriculum and assessments the state might add to the program and wishes it had been rolled out as a pilot program on a smaller scale to work through some of those issues.
“We’re going to give it a try, though, because it’s so beneficial to our families,” Yant said. “We already offer scholarships and sliding-scale fees. This is just added money our families are going to be able to put in their pockets.”
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: What to know about universal preschool Colorado as next deadline nears
