Many Fayette kids aren’t ready for kindergarten. Can bus classrooms, Dolly Parton fix it?

Nearly half of incoming Fayette County kindergartners do not meet the basic standards for starting their education, the lowest level since the readiness scores were first tracked in the 2013-2014 school year, district officials said this week.

An initiative to improve kindergarten readiness for Fayette’s youngest learners was announced Thursday, with Fayette County Public Schools Superintendent Demetrus Liggins saying two preschool buses will act as mobile classrooms for the district, able to hit the road to meet the needs of any neighborhood.

With support from the Fayette County Board of Education, $10 million in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds will be invested to expand early childhood efforts, allowing initiatives to get within easy reach of families and caregivers, especially those in underserved communities.

Another integral part of the initiative, announced by Fayette Education Foundation Executive Director Carrie Boling, will be the arrival of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to the community, a book gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth to age five, no matter their family’s income, officials said Thursday.

Incoming kindergarteners are screened each year for readiness-to-learn standards based on adaptive, cognitive, motor, communication, and social-emotional skills, according to a news release from the city of Lexington and the Fayette County school district. Those factors are then used to compile the readiness score.

For the 2021-2022 school year, Fayette County kindergartners scored a 42% on the readiness score. Liggins said the district had a goal of attaining 100% kindergarten readiness levels by the 2027-28 school year, bolstered by this campaign, which he said will also include more family outreach and engagement efforts, expanding access to pre-kindergarten, and creating and distributing growth and development guides to caregivers, as well as online and app-based resources.

The early childhood education efforts will be executed from within the school district’s existing program, First 5 Lex, which has shared its “Read, Talk, Play” message with families and caregivers since 2017. “The new campaign will allow the message to go further, and to meet families where they are, whether at home, in their doctor’s office, at the library, or at an older sibling’s school, and within their native language,” a news release said.