Our parent company, Nexstar, is marking a 20-year milestone.
To celebrate, we are having a Founder’s Day of Caring, where we give back to the community.
It will be held on Friday, June 17th.
We will head to northeast Memphis to beautify Perea Preschool.
160 students attend Perea Preschool. 80 three year olds and 80 four year olds.
“There are two unique things about Perea. Okay. And, one of those things is the parent involvement and the parent engagement,” principal Alicia Norman said.
That parent engagement involves mandatory home visits and parent’s volunteering at the school.
There is a good reason for that when it comes to the children.
“They are not being exposed to those basic concepts that they need,” Norman said.
Things like knowing their alphabet, numbers, colors, sizes, and shapes.
“We serve a different population, and a lot of folks say well they should know these things. Well, when you serve the population of families that are at or below the poverty line level, you have 76% of them that are single. And, they have multiple children. It’s very hard to manage all of that,” Norman said. “Over 65% of our students scored delayed or very delayed coming into the program. They stay with us for two years. At the end of those two years, over 85 to around 93% of those students leave the program at average, advanced, or very advanced.”
While pre-k or preschool is often overlooked, Norman said it needs to be a priority for a few reasons.
“Over half of our children in Shelby County Schools start kindergarten behind,” Norman said. “Pre-K suspensions and expulsions out number K-12 total, combined.”
For things like biting, cussing, destroying property, being harmful to others, and to self.
