Seeing promise in early education, Sonoma Valley district expands preschool programs

Watching over her noisy Sonoma Valley preschool classroom, director Sonya Valiente described what her 24 young charges learn.

“Circle time, singing, being able to sit - a big thing is social skills,” she said. “When they have a problem with another kid, they are able to handle it. We give them the tools.”

Nearby, Miriam Gutierrez, a parent, scooped sand with her daughter and several other children. Parents at the preschool, located on the El Verano Elementary School campus, are asked to volunteer at least four hours a month in the classroom.

“I don’t force them, but I say they’re the number one teacher for their child,” Valiente said. “If they see them in the classroom, they will know education is important to them.”

The class, one of six located on three Sonoma Valley Unified School District elementary school campuses, is part of a district initiative that combines federal, state and private funding to fully incorporate preschool into the traditional kindergarten-through-12th-grade education. Each class costs roughly $70,000 a year. In January, two classes are to open on a fourth campus.

The district’s efforts reflect a growing body of research that shows good preschools raise long-term academic outcomes, particularly for low-income and minority students. That research has driven greater support from state and federal agencies for development of local preschool programs.

The approach in Sonoma Valley has been to combine community contributions through the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation, federal money through the Head Start program and state funding that comes through the Community Child Care Council of Sonoma County.

“What all of this represents is a huge commitment by the school district to make sure that every single student attends at least one year of preschool before entering kindergarten,” said Laura Zimmerman, executive director of the education foundation, which funds three of the classes.

The initiative places the 4,635-student district at the forefront, along with Petaluma schools, in local attempts to implement universal preschool, a vision touted by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address nearly three years ago.

“They’ve made a statement that for Sonoma Valley children there’s going to be opportunities,” said Alfredo Perez, executive director for First 5 Sonoma County, a tobacco-tax-funded agency that works on children’s health and education issues. First 5 is advocating for a public-private partnership to fund universal preschool in Sonoma County.

“I think that’s what important: for the district to have that vision and a road map for how to get there,” Perez said. “It’s been seen, and research has shown, that providing quality preschool environments is one of the ways to close the achievement gap - which in my mind is really about an opportunity gap.”

The preschool road map for the Sonoma Valley district started when Maité Iturri joined El Verano as principal in 2006, a time when the school was failing state standards.

“It was kind of a process of redefining who we were,” Iturri said. “What did we need to do to change that? We needed to offer more educational opportunities, and the preschool seemed like the first logical step.”

For the great majority of parents in the area, preschool is an out-of-reach expense, she said, but at the same time, “we had kids who were coming to school who were not ready. They’d been home with mom for four or five years - they didn’t know what it was like to sit in a circle, to work in a group.”

The preschool experience also is crucial in an area with a high percentage of students for whom English is a second language, she said.

“Eighty percent of our kids are coming to school without English, so they needed that year of English language acquisition before they could fully participate in a kindergarten program,” Iturri said.

El Verano’s first preschool classroom opened in 2008. A second opened in 2010. In 2012, the school district’s strategic plan included a goal of providing at least one year of preschool for every incoming student through sites on elementary school campuses, making the transition seamless from preschool to kindergarten.

“We’re trying to establish the preschools as the first grade at the schools,” said Susan Langer, the district’s principal of preschools and special education.

In the El Verano morning preschool classroom on Thursday, Miriam Gutierrez said her daughter Fernanda had been coming for only three months.

“She’s already changed so much,” Gutierrez said. “At first she wouldn’t play with the other children. Now she does. It’s preparing her for kindergarten.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay.