CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – The Meck Pre-K program says attendance has more than tripled since it launched in 2018. This year alone, officials said the program had over 200 more applications each week when families could start to apply.
Mary-Margaret Cantor is the Chief Early Education Officer of Smart Start Mecklenburg County. She said the growth is threefold: a deeper understanding of the need for education after the pandemic, recognizing how demanding kindergarten is these days and understanding how much a child’s brain grows in the first few years of his or her life.
“I think parents really began to understand wow, they need something to help them sort of get back up and par and get ready for kindergarten,” Cantor said. “Little kids suffered just like our school-aged children did. A lot of the aspects of their growth and development were slowed down, hindered by the lack of exposure they had to the outside world, the lack of exposure to people they met.”
Cantor said that although the program was cut in half during the pandemic, since 2018, attendance has grown from 600 to nearly 1900 students in Meck Pre-K.
“We expect a lot, we expect kids to come in with a lot at the beginning of kindergarten because we need to move them forward in all of the other things that are happening in elementary school,” Cantor said. “[Meck Pre-K] does send them into kindergarten more prepared because kindergarten demands are pretty high.”
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Cantor said advances made in understanding brain development also play a role in the program’s demand.
“Use it or lose it by age five,” Cantor said. “Over 90 percent of your brain’s developed by the time you hit age five so there better be a lot happening in those first five years.”
If your child will turn four on or before August 31 this year, you can apply to take part in the program. You must live in Mecklenburg County.
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