Cherry Hill Schools adds 16 new preschool classrooms to meet demand; Pre-K registration begins Monday.

Sixteen new preschool classrooms were added to two Cherry Hill schools in January to help meet demand, but the district still has far to go to meet its long-range target of 1,700 seats for 3- and 4-year-olds.

"We have five years to meet our entire preschool universe, which is approximately 1,700 students. And to date (two years into the program), we are serving approximately 615 3 and 4-year-olds from Cherry Hill residents across six locations," Farrah Mahan, assistant superintendent for pre-K-12 and curriculum, said in a district video this month.

Preschool registration through the district website begins this Monday, February 2, and closes on Friday, February 13. 

The 16 new preschool classrooms at Kilmer Elementary School and Malberg Early Childhood Center provided space for more than 200 new preschool students, Superintendent Kwame Morton said in his quarterly report on Tuesday.

Because district facilities cannot accommodate all preschool students, the district uses private providers including Cadence Academy, 1660 Chapel Avenue; Discovery Corner, 53 Haddonfield Road; Mosaic Early Learning, 33 West Haddon Avenue in Oaklyn and Kindercare, 1815 Springdale Road.

Private providers working with the district must adhere to the Cherry Hill curriculum and standards, Mahan and Morton said.

Whether a child "is here in district or at one of our providers it still is the same curriculum and experience and it's a Cherry Hill public school education," Morton said.

Teachers at the external schools participate in Cherry Hill professional development programs, attend the district in-service days and have the same resource materials and supports, Mahan explained.

Mahan said Kilmer was a "prime location" for the district preschool expansion.

"We knew that having a location on the far west side of town would greatly benefit our community," she said. A projected 65 students at Kilmer for preschool will attend either Kilmer elementary or Barton Elementary, Mahan said.

Cherry Hill also added support personnel for its preschool program. Two intervention and referral specialists support teachers, a community parent intervention specialist works with the PTA and makes sure parents are informed and two social workers dedicated to preschool provide "full wraparound services" for students, Mahan explained.

"The implementation of preschool expansion lays the foundation for the academic excellence that our Cherry Hill families are accustomed to and I think that you will see that now, not only from preschool, starting at preschool and going all the way up through graduation," Mahan said.