By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Little Panthers Preschool Principal Tandi Mai has the best staff and the cutest clientele in the district. That's how she opened Wednesday's USD 428 Board of Education luncheon at the new District Education Center just off the 281 Bypass. She provided an update to the board on how staff and students have handled the transition to the new facility.
"You have built this for us, but the teachers are working so hard to build inside what our students and families need to get them ready for kindergarten," she said. "That is the most overwhelmingly inspiring thing I have ever seen, is to see all of these teachers working together."
The board tasked Mai and staff with coming up with a three-year plan for Little Panthers Preschool. Mai said the first year is about establishing and unifying.
"Not eight months ago, we were steel studs," she said. "That's all we had here. Now, we have teachers working, we have kids learning, we have families coming in, and everyone is adjusting to our new status here."
Year two will include leveling-up - adding some new ideas and refining practices already in place. By year three, she expects full autonomy or self-determination.
Four-year-olds were given the FastBridge Fall Benchmark test. Seventy-nine percent tested in Tier 1, or the most advanced, and just nine percent tested in Tier 3. In math, 68 percent tested in Tier 1 and 13 percent tested in Tier 3. The new preschool is helping to replace the need for developmental screenings.
"What we are finding is that, now that we have so many students here with us already, the number of students being screened has decreased," Mai said. "They're here. We're able to see them. We're able to expose them to instruction. We're able to get them moving just a little bit faster."
Total enrollment at Little Panthers Preschool as of Oct. 30 was 245 students. Attendance percentage for the fall parent-teacher conferences exceeded 93 percent.