August 15, 2024

Dear Parents/Guardians of West Genesee UPK students:

We are so excited to welcome you to the 2024-2025 school year, the first year of your child’s journey with West Genesee Central School District. The experience of universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) is special because it is full of so many firsts. We value and appreciate your trust in us as we care for your child and help them to establish an understanding of the world of school and its associated routines and expectations. You will likely receive information directly from your child’s UPK teacher and the site at which they will be attending this year. But, there are also some things that we want to be sure you are aware of about the UPK structure and program because this is a West Genesee UPK program, and our sites vary between here on campus or with collaborative community partners.

West Genesee/Community Agency Partnership

The partnership we have with our community sites - Holy Family and Learn As You Grow - is a relationship that we greatly rely on to provide UPK programming to the students in our community and to offer a variety of program site options. To become a community partner, an agency or organization goes through an application process and review, where particular components are vetted to ensure they are appropriate for children just beginning their school experience and ensure consistency among the different programs our students attend. We recognize that each of these organizations, just like our own four K-4 buildings (East Hill, Onondaga Road, Stonehedge, Split Rock), have their own structures and aspects that make them unique. You may see some differences in events, activities, arrival and dismissal procedures, meals, and more. That is no different than our PTA/PTO groups who have different events and activities, different classroom activities across buildings, or procedures based on the building needs in our K-4 buildings. What will be common across our sites are the academic expectations and overall programming (which the Curriculum note below reviews) and screening/testing for our students.

Please also know that regulatory agencies that oversee our community partners, just like the New York State Education Department (NYSED) does for West Genesee Central School District, also sometimes have different requirements for staff and children/students attending programming at that site. The Office of Child and Family Services is the regulatory agency for Learn As You Grow and the Diocese of Syracuse oversees Holy Family. In addition to meeting our programmatic requirements under NYSED, our partners must also follow any guidance or directives issued by those agencies. This sometimes impacts the events, activities, rules, and general structure of the programs at those sites.

2024-2025 UPK Calendar

There are 180 days built into the UPK program calendar, just as students in Grades K-12 have. These days are inclusive of professional development days for staff. Just as the regulatory agencies impact some of the programming at our partner sites, they may also impact the calendar. An example might be a religious holiday recognized by the Diocese of Syracuse that has Holy Family closed on a particular day while Learn As You Grow and Stonehedge might be open. Regardless of these calendar differences, each site is monitored to ensure that your child receives the 180 days of programming.

Curriculum

The UPK curriculum utilized by West Genesee CSD is Creative Curriculum by Teaching Strategies. This curriculum focuses on the development of the whole child, including cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development. It uses play-based learning strategies and project-based studies that teach children content about the world with explicit instruction in ELA and Math to support early literacy skill development and numeracy understanding. Units you will see your child engage with this year are: The First Six Weeks, Percussion, Architecture, Cameras or Lights (unit choice), Grocery Store, Seeds, and Getting Ready for Kindergarten. Additionally, to support your child’s literacy development, we also utilize Heggerty Phonics, which provides lessons around phonemic awareness and phonics development, things like rhyme, letter naming and sound recognition. West Genesee UPK classrooms also incorporate PEDALS, the pre-cursor to Second Step (used in grades K-6), which emphasizes explicit social-emotional skill lessons for students.

Screening

UPK programs are required to screen students throughout the year to gauge their progress in different areas. You will receive family reports and updates from the assessment program linked to our curriculum three times a year, which line up with the trimester dates our K-4 students also receive report cards. This will provide you with an overview in each area of some of the evidence of learning your child is demonstrating and where they fall in the range of development for that category of learning. Other screenings that are also done to assess your child in UPK are:

ESI (Early Screening Inventory) - this assessment is given once at the beginning of the year and once at the end of the year and provides us information on growth of individual students as well as the cohort overall
Emergent Multilingual Learner Language Profile for Pre-Kindergarten Students - this is required by NYSED for all Pre-Kindergarten students. While Pre-Kindergarten students who speak a language other than English do not necessarily receive additional services, the goal of the questionnaire is to assist Pre-Kindergarten educators in delivering academically and linguistically relevant instruction that strengthens the language and literacy of all students (taken directly from the questionnaire).

Photographs/Publications

Occasionally, our WG Publications Office gathers photographs, videos, and other celebratory evidence of our UPK programs at all sites and posts them on our social media. If you do not wish for your child to be included in these photo opportunities, please send in a written note to your child’s teacher. These will be maintained on file for the duration of the 2024-2025 school year.

Questions/Concerns

We encourage open and active communication between our UPK program and families. Please use the communication chain below if you have questions or concerns about anything your child is experiencing in their transition to West Genesee CSD Pre-Kindergarten. We have great faith your question or concern will be answered or addressed in your initial outreach, but, if it happens to not be the case, please contact the site director or principal followed by the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, respectively.

More information will be forthcoming from your child’s teacher and/or the site for the 2024-2025 school year, so please be on the lookout for this. We look forward to seeing your child grow this year in our UPK programming.

Sincerely,

Stacey J. Eger-Converse

West Genesee Central School District

Universal Pre-K Program Information

Request for Proposal Information-2025-2026

Universal Pre-Kindergarten Registration for 2025-2026

West Genesee CSD UPK Lottery Process

2024-2025 UPK Welcome Letter