Layla, our Resident Princess, will be starting kindergarten this fall. Although she’s excited to attend the same school as Big Sis in a few months, Baby Girl won’t be entirely new to the process because of her time in pre-school.

The twice-a-week program not only reinforces the learning of letters, numbers and reading that her father and I started at home, the curriculum also teaches colors, shapes, Spanish, music and exercise, as well as advance preparation in handling authority figures and peers.

That type of academic head start is what DISD is offering with Round-Up Week, a new annual event kicking off next week (Apr. 7 to Apr. 11) that encourages parents with three and four-year-old children to register for fall Pre-K classes at any Dallas ISD elementary school.

The highly-publicized push is an effort to derail a disturbing trend: according to dallasisd.org, despite the available funding and classroom space, Dallas County educates less eligible students than other large urban counties, leaving half of new students unprepared for kindergarten. As a result, 60 percent of those late-starters are less likely to attend college, 50 percent are more likely to require special education classes and 25 percent are more vulnerable to dropping out altogether.

“Nothing’s more crucial to long-term success than a quality Pre-K program,” says Alan Cohen, Executive Director of DISD’s Early Childhood Education Department. “85 percent of a child’s brain development happens by the time they’re 5 years old, which means that, biologically, children’s brains are sponges for knowledge in that window of time and that creates the best opportunity to reach kids. Parents, of course, are a child’s first teachers, but those growing up in non-professional households hear 30 million less words—that’s a very high bar for a child to overcome, so the active play, reading and socialization that they receive in those early education classes can make a tremendous impact on their long-term future.”

For those who believe that pre-school is nothing more than a daycare on campus, Cohen begs to differ. “We’re seeing that children who start kindergarten without Pre-K are an average of 12 to 18 months behind. The longer you wait to intervene, the more difficult, the more costly and the less effective everything the school district does for your child is going to be. Early learning is more than ‘ABC, 123,’ it’s a full-day program that provides social skills, emotional skills and motor skills. There’s small group instruction, art, science, music, even a Mandarin and Chinese language program in select schools.”

The qualifications that students must meet to become enrolled are having parents in the Armed Forces, being low-income, living in a homeless shelter or foster care and using English only as a second language. Parents should bring proof of residency, proof of income (a pay stub or a W2) and the child’s birth certificate.

“There are are approximately 9,500 children enrolled this year and an estimated 13,000 qualify for early education, so this new annual calendar event is an effort to close that gap,” Cohen says. “We either start our district’s children early to be successful, or we play ‘catch-up’ for the rest of their academic career.”

For additional questions and further information, please visit www.dallasisd.org.