Rolla Bulldogs Preschool Pups
Since its opening, the early childhood education program in Rolla 31 School District has been limited because of space.
The program was open only half a day per child, so more children could be enrolled. Even with that, the number of 4-year-old children who could enter the pre-kindergarten classrooms was limited. That resulted in waiting lists of parents hoping to enroll their children.
With the help of Phelps County Community Foundation, the district has purchased the former Columbia College building (see Page 1A) for use as the district’s early childhood center.
After the former college building is prepared for early childhood education, there will be no more half-day limits and no more waiting lists. That is the good news for parents that Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kyle Dare shared at the Rolla Board of Education meeting Thursday night, Jan. 9.
Unfortunately, it can’t happen overnight.
“We’re looking to open fully in the fall of ’26,” Dare said. “That’s the goal.”
Dare said the district will spend this semester doing planning and design work with the district’s architecture and engineering teams.
“They've already been in the building a little bit. We've had some initial things. We had them do some inspections before we bought the building, those types of things, but now we’re really doing a deep dive,” he said. “And we'll include staff in that, because we want their input of what they need and what they want that to look like.”
Dare said actual construction work on the remodeling will start in the summer. At least that is the plan.
“We expect that will take probably the better part of a year,” he said. “So, we say a potential soft opening in April or May (of 2026) to kind of work out some bugs and kinks and those kind of things.”
He’s hoping for an opportunity to do some summer 2026 programming to prepare for shifting the existing program to the newly remodeled facility for the fall semester opening.
Filling a need for children and parents
The new early childhood center will definitely fill a need for children and their parents.
“We currently do our early childhood programs through all three elementary schools,” Dare said.
A few more than 160 pupils are currently enrolled, and there are a few more than 50 on the waiting list.
“They're on a waiting list for a multitude of reasons,” he said. Some working parents can’t find childcare for a half day. Some can't work out the transportation. “In some cases, we just don't have a space for them that works.”
Dare said he and early childhood director Laura Brown ceased adding to the waiting list because 50 spaces will not open up before the children begin kindergarten and it is hurtful “to give people false hope and continue adding to that list.”
Wyman serves most of Rolla’s early childhood special education programs. These are the “peers classes” with children who have an individual educational program, or IEP, in classes with students who do not have an IEP.
Wyman Elementary School has a mixture of those early childhood special ed students with the typically developing students, as well as one “low-incidence room” for come pupils with more severe problems.
Truman Elementary School has one classroom and Mark Twain Elementary has two classrooms. Each classroom has a half-day program.
“They serve roughly 12 per session. That fluctuates a little bit, but roughly 12 per class per session is our is our max,” he said.
With the new early childhood center, all of the district’s children who are 4 years old will be eligible. Dare said attendance will not be required, but it will be open with no waiting list needed.
Also valuable for training
“In addition, we have our early childhood careers lab here at Rolla Technical Center,” he said. Under the direction of instructor Ruth Diaz, high school students from Rolla and the sending schools work with the pre-K children to develop credentials to be early childhood paraprofessionals.
“It’s kind of that pre-teaching model for some of them, but it helps them get those certifications. We do have some students that attend that. It's kind of a specialty program,” Dare said.
Some pre-K children are seen at RTC in a shortened time frame. This program will be worked into the new facility in 2026.
Also to be centered in the new facility will be the Parents as Teachers program.
Director Brown works with parent-educators in 241 families, which translates to 341 children.
“All of that operates out of Laura’s office across the hall (in the school administration office),” Dare said. “It’s Laura’s office, storage, workroom, screening room, PAT home. I don’t know how they get everything in there. It’s pretty impressive.”
Expanding to include all
Centering all of that early childhood education effort into the single building will help in reaching all families who want to be reached.
“We do a lot with our early childhood kids, but we're not getting all of them, and we're not getting to some that we need to quite honestly,” Dare said. “Funding is always a piece of that.”
The early childhood special education funding is a pass-through from the federal government through the state, he said. As long as 50% of the students have an IEP, the district qualifies for full reimbursement of those students.
Dare also noted that the full-day model for early childhood education will help the district meet attendance requirements for free-reduced lunch funding, requirements that it is not meeting currently.
Working with private partners in childcare has been helpful and will continue, Dare said, but the full day model should help to overcome both the partners and the school have had to overcome.
Transportation with the full-day model will likely become less challenging for both parents/grandparents and the district.
And a full day for the children could help some families with childcare costs they now have.
It is needs like these that led to Phelps County Community Foundation to assist in the purchase of the early childhood center. Four Rivers Community Healthcare is also a partner and will provide services through a clinic to be established in the building.
“I do want to make sure everybody understands this is not mandatory,” Dare said. “We're not mandating that all 4-year-olds attend our program, or that all 4-year-olds attend any program. This is open and will be free of charge, and we hope to have every kid. But that's not necessarily the case if families work out better for them to continue using private partners or home placements. We understand that families have decisions to make, so we certainly appreciate that and understand.”
He added the district will continue to serve a relatively small number of identified 3-year-olds. These are high need children that have been identified for those extra needs under the early childhood special education program.
Opening a medical clinic in the building
There will also be a partnership with Four Rivers Community Health.
“They’re going to be looking to open a medical and dental facility. They're primarily focused on the pediatric side,” Dare said.
This will be helpful, he said, because “we have kids who sometimes have chronic ear infections. That's pretty common with that age.”
A child might be running a fever and when the school nurse checks them, a follow-up with a physician might be called for. That can be a problem when parents can’t take time off from work.
It could be a recurring problem, too, needing physician oversight.
“With parental permission, what we think is possible is if a child is showing symptoms and signs, we contact the parents, get their permission to do these things,” Dare said. “‘We take them over to the clinic, straight from the classroom, mom or dad can zoom in, teleconference in, FaceTime in, whatever works, or be there for part of that visit.
“Maybe grandma still comes and picks up, but now, when grandma comes and picks them up, we have a diagnosis, we have a script to hand them for antibiotics, and we're all on our on our path to be better and address the issue with limited impacts to everybody in the whole system.”
Dare also said, “There's going to be a little bit of a focus in this for dental care.”
Recalling his own trauma as a child going to the dentist, Dare said the early childhood center an Four Rivers will be working on helping “to develop some healthy habits and some preventative care so that going to the dentist is not a traumatic experience, and maybe helps develop lifelong habits that are more beneficial.”
Having the dental clinic in the schoolhouse will be helpful for parents who might not be able to take off work multiple times.
“We’re really excited about this partnership, and there's a lot of details to work out, and we'll bring those things back to you, but always, I want to emphasize, always, with parental permission, we're never going to seek treatment or do things with your kid that's not, that's not your choice to do, but we do think it will provide a great option for people,” Dare said.
Economic impact is noteworthy
Dare said the economic impact of the foundation’s investment will be enormous, citing a study that shows “there's an $8 to $9 return on an investment for every dollar spent at the early childhood level.”
And noted, “As the old band director, I can tell you, it makes sense to me, because if you can help correct behaviors before they become habits or before they're practiced in the wrong way, you gain exponentially faster. And so that's where those investments come from.”
There will also be more jobs opening.
“We will, of course, need additional staffing, custodians, food service workers, additional teachers, additional paraprofessionals,” he said. “The clinic will need additional staff, nurses and folks to help with that. So substantial job opportunities are coming with this.”
He said the district is working with private partners in childcare, too.
“Obviously, there's an impact to them, and we're going to work to do what we can to minimize that to their benefit as best we can. We don't want this to hurt them. The whole goal is to expand early childhood access, not to shift it so we'll continue to work with them,” he said.
Moreover, this frees up space at all three elementary schools.
“The one classroom at Truman is not going to change the world, but it's still a classroom, and it's a large classroom, it will be beneficial,” he said. “Mark Twain is busting at the seams right now, so those two classrooms will be great. We can pull some people out of some closets and share some actual educational space.”
The biggest impact will be on Wyman Elementary School.
“We're looking at roughly eight to nine full classroom spaces, which will be huge as we're looking at the housing expansion and things that are they're planned here in Rolla,” Dare said. “That buys us some freedom and some flexibility as we move forward. And that's a huge impact to the district to not have to look at, I always say trailers, but Dr. Welch likes me to call them learning cottages.”
Putting the entire early education effort under one room provides multiple efficiency improvement, he noted.
“Not only economically,” he said. Therapists will be able to work more efficiently will all the children there, cutting down travel time.
Educationally, the collaboration and things that teachers and staff can do and work together as a team to get everybody the same experiences will be enhanced.
And barriers will be removed, such as the midday transportation barrier.
Gratitude expressed for the donation
With the significant amount of money provided by Phelps County Community Foundation, the district will name the building for that foundation.
“Phelps County Community Foundation Early Childhood Center is what we're calling the building,” Dare said. “We will, of course, acknowledge the with signage and those kind of things as we move forward.”
He noted that the foundation on its website has identified early childhood education as one of the “gears for progress” of Phelps County.
“It’s no secret that early childhood, whether that's preschool, child care, daycare, whatever you want to call that, impacts the community in many, many ways,” Dare said. “And so that's one of the pieces that they've taken on as one of their foundational pillars to work on, and that's what really kind of generated this conversation.”
The district and the foundation have worked together on other programs, such as a new teacher project in conjunction with all the school districts in Phelps County.
Dare offered a special thanks to the Philips County Community Foundation.
“This community has stepped up in large response. To think that that within a matter of a few weeks, they've raised a million, they're well on their way to a million and a half, and with a goal of $1.9 million, that's phenomenal,” he said.
“And certainly, I don't know that I have the right words for that, but we're very grateful for them and their commitment to this community and the growth of everybody. We want to say thank you to Columbia College as well. They were very great in this transition. They have donated what I would tell you is tens of thousands of dollars of furnishings and equipment.”
The building as a college campus “has probably one of the nicest science labs that I've ever seen, and they left not only the lab with all the furnishings, but a lot of the glassware and equipment. There are three fume hoods that are basically brand new, and we're going to transfer all that to junior high and high school programs and do some renovations in those regards.
“They left 400-plus folding chairs. There are 100-plus folding tables, desks, all kinds of things out there, computers. It’s amazing what they donated to us in that regard.
So, we appreciate Columbia College. I wanted to come up with something cool to say. This was the best I could come up with.”
Dare concluded with this: “Complex problems require complex solutions, and I think that's what this is. This is everybody coming together with a common goal. There are things we've got to work out. There's still a lot of details to figure out, and we have work to do, but the partnerships and supports through this program have been phenomenal, and it's great to just have common ground to build from, and everybody being on the same page. And I think that's truly reflective of the Rolla spirit, and it's exciting to be a part of, truly.”
