A growing educational tool around the country has been
exposing youngsters to nature by having outdoor-themed preschools that teach
and, at the same time, getting impressionable young minds feeling comfortable
with the outdoors in a learning environment.
At the March 24 meeting of the Wright County Board of
Commissioners, Parks & Recreation Director Marc Mattice came before the
board seeking approval on a lease agreement with Nature Preschool, a non-profit
organization that began operating a preschool in Bertram Chain of Lakes Park in
Monticello and is looking to expand the program for the next school year in
Robert Ney Memorial Park in Maple Lake.
Mattice said the pilot program lived up to all
expectations and that the program at Ney Park is a natural fit.
“We started a Nature Preschool at Bertram last year
and it was very successful,” Mattice said. “We’re looking expand that
opportunity to the Maple Lake area with Ney Park. We have a lease agreement for
your approval. It’s been through the county board, the county attorney’s office
and Risk Management. I’d like to have you authorize us to enter into that lease
to establish the Nature Preschool with Nature Explorers and Robert Ney Park for
the 2020-21 school year.”
The proposal will be a five-day-a-week preschool that
is currently being planned as a morning session, but, depending on the numbers
that are produced, could be expanded to morning and afternoon sessions. The
lease would cover the 28 weeks that preschool is conducted with a lease payment
to the Parks & Recreation Department of $8,550.
The hub of the preschool program would be at the Ney
Nature Center. It was built in 1994 and gets a considerable amount of usage
from several groups, including ongoing rentals from Hamline University and St.
Cloud State University. When it was constructed, the Ney Nature Center was
intended to be an educational oasis for children and Mattice feels the
preschool fits directly into the vision of what the building is intended for.
“It follows really closely with the mission for our
Nature Center – environmental education and getting youth involved,” Mattice
said. “It’s for ages 3 to 4 – getting ready for kindergarten. They spend about 90
percent of their time outside in the woods and playing in the water. At Bertram
this year, they were doing hikes. That was very popular. It’s kind of a new
trend with preschools.”
One of the primary benefits of dealing with a
non-profit organization like Nature Explorers is that it provides its own
insurance, reducing the county’s risk of liability. Parks & Recreation will
serve as a facilitator, but won’t be hands-on with the curriculum other than to
assist in pointing the teaching staff in the right direction for kid-friendly
outdoor areas in county parks.
“We’re excited to have this come out to Ney,” Mattice
said. “I think it fits our mission and fits our goals for that building. It
allows us to have a little bit of a revenue stream on Monday through Friday
when we’re typically a Saturday/Sunday operation at our Nature Center with
rentals. It doesn’t conflict with our typical programming use. It expands that
without putting a lot of cost or liability on the county.”
There is discussion being had with Nature Explorers
about having both morning and afternoon preschool that could allow working families
in which both parents work during the day to access the program.
“They also talked about with the location of Ney Park –
even with Bertram – that you have working families and double-income families
that have a hard time because they don’t have transportation out to the parks,”
Mattice said. “They have to drop them and pick them up. They’re talking about
maybe having a morning and afternoon session with a break in the middle so some
can go to all-day preschool with nap time and snack time during the break time
to help double income families to be able to drop them off in the morning and
pick them up in the afternoon.”
The board unanimously approved the lease agreement to
start the Ney Park program up for the 2020-21 school year. The hope is that it
has the same level of success that was enjoyed during the current school year
at Bertram Park.
Commissioner Darek Vetsch, who lives in Monticello, has
seen how successful the first program was and hopes to see similar results in
Ney Park.
“This is a great expansion, seeing as it went so well
at Bertram,” Vetsch said. “They started off with a morning session right away,
but they’ve gotten to the point of adding afternoons and doing it a lot sooner
than they expected. They thought it might go longer out to do that, but they ended
up filling it up a lot quicker than they thought.”
The intention of the county parks system has been to
use it as a resource for county families and as a valuable learning tool for
preschool children. Commissioner Mike Potter said Wright County has made a
significant investment in its parks system over the last two decades and programs
like this are made possible because the county has a robust parks system in
place.
“I like things like this because our citizens pay for these
parks,” Potter said. “We’re going to get something out of it, they’re going to
get something out it and the kids are going to get something out of it. If you
get these kids outside and you can teach them a lot of different things when
they get to (kindergarten) I think they’ll be better adjusted. It’s a better
utilization of our parks and it’s something a lot of counties can’t do. We
invested a lot of money in our parks and it’s time to use it.”