Spartan Kids Pre-K

Southwest Allen County Schools; a full day preschool program for four year olds, sited at the Covington, Haverhill, Lafayette Meadows and Whispering Meadows elementary schools; piloted in 2024 and expanded across the district in 2025

The Program: Spartan Kids Pre K is the general education preschool of the Metropolitan School District of Southwest Allen County, one of two preschool programs the district runs; the other is a special education developmental preschool that also enrolls typical peers. The district prints the program's name three ways: the elementary handbook heads its own handbook section "Spartan Kids Pre-K," the district's Pre-K pages head it "Spartan Pre K" and link it as "Spartan Kids Pre K," and the Journal Gazette prints the hyphenated form. This entry follows the form the master inventory carries, and notes the variation rather than hiding it. The name carries the Spartan identity of the district's high school down to its youngest students; no naming account is published, and none is claimed.

The Pilot: The program began as an experiment at one school. The Journal Gazette reported that Southwest Allen County Schools piloted Spartan Kids Pre-K at Covington Elementary School with twenty two students, every one of them attending on a state On My Way Pre-K voucher, in the words of Assistant Superintendent Jeanine Kleber. A report of the district's board business dated January 9, 2025 has administrators telling the board the Covington pilot would expand to four Title I elementary sites the following year, which fixes the pilot in the 2024 to 2025 school year and the expansion in 2025 to 2026. The district chose its ground carefully: Covington is the most diverse of the district's elementaries in the federal record.

The Expansion: In its second year the program served nearly one hundred students across four sites: Covington, Haverhill, Lafayette Meadows and Whispering Meadows, four of the district's six elementary schools. A district report to the board counted ninety one students enrolled at the four sites; the newspaper's figure and the board's figure are printed as they stand, for the same year, and not merged. Each site held a Level 4 rating on Indiana's Paths to Quality scale. The district's two remaining elementaries, Aboite and Deer Ridge, have no site.

The Classroom: The district's handbook sets the terms. A child must be four years old by August 1 to attend. Admission is first come, first served, with priority given to children who qualify for On My Way Pre-K vouchers, and the program is available to students within the district. Each classroom is capped at twenty four students and staffed with a teacher and two instructional assistants. The day is a full school day, built on Indiana's Early Learning Foundations, with transportation for district residents and meals served, the whole of it aimed, in the district's words, at kindergarten readiness: a four year old's first year run on an elementary school's schedule, in an elementary school's building.

The Money: Preschool is the one part of Indiana public schooling the state's funding formula does not pay for, since prekindergarten students are excluded from it. The district therefore funds the program from vouchers, grants and federal Title I dollars, on an estimated budget of about five hundred two thousand dollars, most of it wages and benefits. Families who pay their own way are charged seven hundred dollars a month, and about forty families were paying in the expansion year. The state's On My Way program, which carried the whole pilot, tightened as the program grew: a statewide enrollment cap of two thousand five hundred children, eligibility narrowed to one hundred forty percent of the federal poverty level, and coverage reduced to six thousand eight hundred dollars a year at a weekly provider rate of one hundred forty eight dollars. The district held twenty vouchers in the expansion year, two fewer than the pilot's twenty two, and its answer to the shortage is in the newspaper's account: voucher eligible families who could not obtain a voucher were not charged, on Kleber's stated philosophy that a family the state meant to help should not be billed because the state's list ran out.

Why It Exists: The program's origins, in the district's own telling, are two administrators' long held conviction. Fred Graf, the district's community connections and special projects director and a former elementary principal, told the Journal Gazette that he and Kleber, also a former kindergarten through fifth grade principal, had long believed the district must offer preschool services. One board report summary renders the director's surname as Groff; this entry follows the newspaper's Graf, and the discrepancy is recorded in the research brief rather than resolved in print.

Today: The district's Pre-K pages record enrollment open for the current school year and for 2026 to 2027, with the program running at its four sites. No federal record exists for Spartan Kids Pre K; it is a district program and not a school of record, and this entry claims no federal figures for it. Its documented life is short and plainly told: twenty two children at one school in 2024, nearly one hundred at four schools the year after, funded by a patchwork the district assembles each year because the state's formula will not. It is the youngest institution in this history's schools section, and the only one whose students cannot yet read the page about it.

Sources:

1. The Journal Gazette, by Ashley Sloboda, via mynewsonthego.com, 2026: Spartan Kids Pre-K piloted at Covington Elementary with 22 students, all on state On My Way Pre-K vouchers, per Assistant Superintendent Jeanine Kleber; nearly 100 students across four sites in the expansion year; the estimated budget of about $502,000; classrooms capped at 24 with a teacher and two instructional assistants; the $700 monthly charge and about 40 paying families; the state's cap of 2,500 and coverage of $6,800 a year at $148 a week; 20 vouchers held in the expansion year; Fred Graf on the program's origins.
2. Citizen Portal, January 9, 2025: administrators told the board the Covington pilot would expand to four Title I elementary sites the following year.
3. Citizen Portal, board meeting report, 2025: 91 students enrolled at the four sites; each site rated Level 4 on Indiana's Paths to Quality scale.
4. Southwest Allen County Schools, 2025 to 2026 elementary handbook, Spartan Kids Pre-K Student Handbook section: the four sites and their addresses; children four years old by August 1; first come, first served admission with priority to On My Way qualifiers; curriculum built on Indiana's Early Learning Foundations.
5. Southwest Allen County Schools, Pre-K information pages, read 2026: two district preschool programs, Spartan Pre K as the full day general education program and a special education developmental preschool; enrollment open for the current and the 2026 to 2027 school years.