Affton School Board Approves Creation of Early Childhood Education Center

At a special meeting on Thursday, the decided to move forward on plans to create the district’s own early childhood education (ECE) center.

According to Interim Superintendent Ken Weissflug, the board unanimously approved an agreement for the acquisition of land and a building for the new center at 9832 Reavis Road. The district expects the transaction to be closed in June.

The district anticipates opening the center in the fall of 2012. The district has not yet released details on how many children the new facility will serve.

The move was first announced this morning in an email to district staff, which Weissflug forwarded on to Patch.

The district will fund the buying and renovating of the new facility by restructuring the district’s bond debt. Weissflug said that this would be done in a way that yields proceeds without increasing the district’s debt service costs or forcing the district to increase taxes or issue new bonds.

To advise the district on the project, the board formed an early childhood education committee consisting of staff, parents, patrons and community leaders. This committee will offer guidance on both the design of the new facility and on the new ECE program.

Developing Affton’s ECE program has been an objective on the district’s five-year Comprehensive School Improvement Plan, developed in 2009 and 2010, which charts and organizes the district’s goals and priorities through 2014. According to Weissflug, who spoke on this issue at the school board’s regular meeting on Tuesday, the administration is studying ECE programs in other neighboring districts to see what works and what doesn’t.

“A growing body of research indicates a child’s most productive and influential years of learning occur before the age of five,” Weissflug wrote in this morning’s email. “These findings, along with the establishment of curiosity and social skills, lay the foundations for all further learning. Failure in the early years to develop adequately in these areas has been shown to lead directly to underachievement in the elementary grades and beyond.”

Since the early 1970s Affton partnered with the Lindbergh School District in their ECE program on Concord School Road, but in 2005 Lindbergh ended that partnership as they began to move on plans to create their own new ECE facility, .

Affton also has a small ECE partnership with Special School District at the St. George school on 4974 Heege Road, which mixed special and mainstream education students. Weissflug said this was a good program, but that the district wanted something larger in scope.

Weissflug said that the board, through the new committee, plans to host an event to get input on the project from parents and community members.

“The board recognizes that none of this is possible without the generous support of the Affton community,” Weissflug said.