Reinstituting Preschool Even If It Kills Me!

My focus this week is preschool. We had a great little preschool program for three years: a wonderful teacher and aides, happy kids who learned a lot and were more than ready for kindergarten. But the program was losing money, and the parents weren't alerted to the situation until it was essentially too late. We jumped in and managed to have 12 kids registered by the end of June, but the Parish Finance Council pulled the plug on us because they wanted us to have 16 kids. We could not convince them that many people wait until late summer to register. Sadly, that's exactly what happened, and had we been allowed to proceed, we would've had more than 20 kids enrolled for the current school year. What we ended up with instead was a bunch of angry families suddenly scrambling to find places for their kids.

This year, our Board of Specified Jurisdiction (fancy school board model adopted by the Archdiocese) decided that we can't increase enrollment without a preschool program to serve as a feeder to the school. So they asked those of us who had worked our tushies off last year to join with them and put together a plan for relaunching the program. Here's what we've done so far to get going:

1. Won Over the Powers that Be
We met with the Parish Finance Council to plead our case, present our plan, and get their blessing to proceed. The principal had handled the financial end, coming up with the tuition plan, and our financial guy presented that info. along with assurances of our ability to fundraise to cover any shortfall. Our second member has been working with the Archdiocese on development issues--she was able to talk about options for staffing that can keep our costs down. I put together a comprehensive marketing plan, including a competitive analysis of other programs available in our community. When the dust settled, we received many claps on the back and wishes of good luck--now we just have to deliver!

2. Grassroots Efforts
We passed out fliers at baseball registration two Saturdays in February; posted the flier in public places like the library and grocery store; made personal phone calls to invite parish families with children of preschool age; at our big annual parish fundraiser, handed out business cards promoting the open house on one side and Ladies' Night Out on the other; took a table at a park district market event, sold candy bars (leftover from another one of our fundraising efforts), and passed out the general info. flier, the open house invite, and a coupon for $50 off registration for families who would sign up at the open house.

3. Media Promotion
Submitted info. to local media outlets' calendar sections, including our daily newspaper, weekly shopper paper, and local-access TV station; ran ads in the weekly shopper; had write-ups in the church bulletin and monthly school newsletter.

4. The Event
We had our Early Education Round-Up Night in March. The old preschool room was restored to its former glory, and all teachers from preschool through 3rd grade were present in their classrooms to answer questions. We supplied each of them with a couple of neatly uniformed kids to show off their daily routines and good manners to the visitors. We didn't start until 7:00, which I thought was a mistake when trying to entice families with small children. But we did have people coming through non-stop all evening long. Our net that night: four preschoolers, several kindergartners, a 3rd grader and a 7th grader, who have put down money and will be joining us for the 2010-2011 school year.

5. Ongoing Efforts
This month, in addition to two more evening open houses, we'll offer weekly two-day sessions of Preschool Practice for three- and four-year-olds to come in and sample what actual preschool days are like. We promoted both programs in all of the same outlets, as well as in the flier we handed out at last week's parade (1200 copies!). Today, I worked on little table tents to remind patrons at our Mothers' Day Pancake Breakfast this weekend (1 hour) and wrote the ad for our local shopper newspaper (40 minutes). Now if we can just get those little bodies in the door!