Pre-K enrollment in Maryland ticks back up under Blueprint. What are benefits, challenges?

For the first time since the pandemic, the number of children in Maryland enrolled in pre-Kindergarten programs climbed above 30,000 last year. Since then, that number has grown even more and additional enrollment is expected.

The state is in the early stages of implementing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future , a decade-long education reform law, which requires an expansion of full-day pre-K for 3-and 4-year-old children.

“There’s a reason why early childhood education is Pillar I (of the Blueprint law),” said Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright, in an June 26 phone interview. "It’s the foundation upon which all future education is built.”

But the state isn't acting alone in implementing the new law. County school systems are having to do some of the heavy lifting for pre-K — from building new classrooms to contracting with private childcare providers to provide additional pre-K spots.

So where was Maryland with pre-K prior to the implementation of some of these changes?

“In the middle of the pack,” said Allison Friedman-Krauss, associate research professor at Rutgers University’s National Institute for Early Education Research, in a July 10 interview. Maryland ranked 17 ^th in pre-K access for 4-year-olds nationally and 19 ^th in access for 3-year-olds, according to her organization’s 2023 annual State of Preschool report , based on data from the 2022-2023 school year. Six states in the country, she said, do not have a pre-school program.

Maryland and its local governments, on the other hand, are making an investment. The return? “In the short term,” said Friedman-Krauss, “you definitely see children who are more prepared and ready to enter school.”

More: Maryland Superintendent of Schools embraces 'once-in-a-generation' opportunity

‘I thought (children) go to school at 5’

Last year, in an article about “ childcare deserts ” in the state, the Herald-Mail interviewed the mother of a toddler, who had been enrolled in a childcare program after a difficult search for one.

This year, the story was different.

After hearing about the Wicomico County Birth to 5 program from someone at the childcare, Jocelyn Elliott and her husband enrolled their daughter in that program, which included home visits. While the “shy” younger Elliott, who arrived during the pandemic, worked on her speech, it was her mother, who holds a doctoral degree, who learned a lesson from a program instructor.

Her daughter could enroll that year in a pre-K program for 3-year-olds in Wicomico County.

“I thought (children) go to school at 5,” said Elliott, recalling her surprise, in a July 9 interview.

Reporting this year indicated most young children across the state have not been enrolled in pre-Kindergarten.

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“While 40% of the state’s eligible youngsters were enrolled in pre-K in the 2022-23 school year, the Blueprint aims to double that percentage in a decade,” the Capital News Service report said.

The younger Elliott, who transitioned from childcare to pre-K in the 2023-2024 school year, is a part of that growth. That growth in pre-K enrollment statewide, and in Wicomico County, has been the result of much effort in recent years.

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The effort to expand pre-K statewide & in Washington, Wicomico counties

In 2021, there were 23,616 students enrolled in Maryland in pre-K, a significant drop from the pre-pandemic enrollment, according to the Maryland State Department of Education website . In 2024, the state's enrollment reached 31,381, according to a Maryland State Department of Education presentation earlier this year.

Tracy Jost, an early childhood education policy specialist at Rutgers University’s National Institute for Early Education Research, noted not just the expansion in enrollment numbers under the new law, but also the expansion in the youngest students’ time in the pre-K classrooms.

“With the Blueprint, Maryland also, like many states, moved from serving children in a half day program to a full day program,” said Jost, in joint July 10 interview with Friedman-Krauss. “We know that if children get those supports early, they tend to make larger gains quicker prior to entering kindergarten.”

More: Find out where Maryland ranks in national report with four key education areas

Some county school systems have been advertising their enlarging pre-K programs.

To promote 4-year-old pre-K across Washington County in Western Maryland, staff from the county school system visited local businesses and posted a pre-K flier in the community, according to a 2024 county Blueprint planning document accessed online.

That same document said pre-K was promoted through a pre-K promotional video that was shown in previews at the local movie theater and on Facebook.

As of March 12 of this year 1,149 students were enrolled in Washington County’s pre-K program compared to 1,035 students on September 30, 2022, reflecting an increase of 100-plus students. The county is scheduled to open a new elementary school in August 2027, with the initial plans for the building including three 4-year-old classrooms and two 3-year-old classrooms.

The Western Maryland district is not alone in increasing the number of pre-K seats.

Carroll County, in central Maryland, for example, increased its pre-K student slots from 400 to 460 seats, with plans to almost double the current amount of seats to 840 by 2028, according to reporting in the Carroll County Times .

The growth in pre-K seats has not come automatically or without exceeding some expectations.

In November of 2022, Wicomico County Blueprint Coordinator Frederick Briggs, an assistant superintendent with the county school system, wrote a letter to the statewide Accountability and Implementation Board, which is charged with overseeing the new law.

“At this time, we have reached full capacity in our schools, making it impossible to serve a more significant number of Prekindergarten age children,” he said. Briggs noted the county expanded full-day pre-K classrooms for 3-year-olds from three to seven. Pre-K classrooms for 4-year-olds, he said, were in all 11 of the county’s primary schools, totaling 36 classrooms for 720 students.

Less than two years later, after converting five pre-K 3-year-old classrooms in public-school sites to pre-K 4-year-old classrooms, the number of public seats for 4-year-olds in Wicomico County expanded to 840 in fiscal year 2024.

Additionally, a Memorandum of Understanding reached between Wicomico County Public Schools and two private childcare programs added 32 more pre-K four-year-old seats and 38 pre-K three-year-old seats, according to a 2024 county Blueprint planning document accessed online.

The same document said: “Looking ahead to (fiscal year 2026), enrollment is projected to rise to 990 Prekindergarten Three- and Four-Year-Old students, necessitating an increase (in) classroom teachers and instructional assistants.” Additionally, capital improvements, cited in the document, include the construction of six new classrooms.

More: Moore's Maryland budget boosts child care, education, without raising taxes. What to know.

‘To find a community that cares ...’

This past school year, Wicomico County had just two public pre-K three-year-old classrooms. Fortunately for the Elliott family, the family’s youngest learner had a seat in one of those classrooms after her mom found out about the opportunity from her daughter’s instructor in the Birth to 5 program.

“It’s really been a great experience,” said Jocelyn Elliott, during an interview, complementing everyone involved with pre-K from the school’s principal to her daughter’s teacher in the pre-K 3 program to the school’s speech therapist that her daughter visits at Salisbury’s Charles H. Chipman Elementary.

Parents of one child, Elliott and her husband have been involved with school activities to include meetings, field trips and a field day, where Jocelyn Elliott watched her daughter show signs of independence.

“To find a community that cares about (my) child just as much as (I) do, and cares about her succeeding with both emotional and educational support, it’s really just been refreshing,” Jocelyn Elliott said. Pre-K for her daughter, she said, is “definitely a progression in the right.”

And in her daughter’s first school year, the pre-K teacher gave her some joyful news too about the girl who had been in speech therapy.

“She’s been singing today,” Elliott recalls the teacher said. “She’s been talking all day.”

And for Elliott, the mother who found out just last year about pre-K: “That really makes me so happy.”

Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Pre-K enrollment in Maryland ticks back up under Blueprint. What are benefits, challenges?