For the second year in a row, Petal Primary School will host its annual Kindergarten Round Up event virtually to help families stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic while allowing children to pre-register for kindergarten.
The event, which was held at the school prior to the pandemic, will be available from March 22 to April 22 at bit.ly/3viDTbP and on the primary school’s Facebook page. From there, parents will be able to fill out the necessary Google Form for registration.
Children must turn 5 years old before Sept. 1 to be eligible for the upcoming kindergarten semester.
“Obviously, we want to make sure that all the kids in the community that are ready for school come to school, and we want them to get that head start so that we’re ready for those kids,” primary school principal Tessa Trimm said. “We want to have their name on a desk so that there’s a place for them here at Petal Primary School.
“The other thing is, it helps me to know how many teachers to have. If there’s 300 kindergartners out there, I need to be prepared for 300, and that means that I have to have enough teachers for those kids out there. So it’s really important for staffing numbers for us, that we know who all those kiddos are.”
The Google Form will allow officials to get the children’s information in the school’s computer system. Children also will be virtually screened to see whether they know letters, sounds, numbers and vocabulary, and to ensure there are no speech concerns.
“None of those things matter, in that it’s not a test that you have to score a certain number on to be able to get in,” Trimm said. “We take everybody.
“But it helps us know if students have any significant needs, so we can make sure that we evenly distribute our students in our kindergarten classrooms.”
Once the Google Form is completed, parents will receive emails informing them of the next steps of registration.
“We’re going to screen kids with just a basic screener, and it’s going to be done virtually,” Trimm said. “We learned through COVID that this really was a concise way to do things.
In addition, officials will hold Kindergarten Information Day on May 1 at the primary school, featuring self-guided tours of the campus. Parents will be given the form to sign up for that event after their children are pre-registered through Kindergarten Round Up.
