East Central Reporter

The Mattoon Community Unit School District 2 school board held a meeting where one of the district’s principals mentioned one of their preschools won an award.

“We have a standard that we are always striving to achieve and so, we have that consistently that we can look at and use that for our school improvement process,” Jayme Holt, the Principal for Franklin Preschool, said during meeting. “There’s always the research and best practices that come out of that, which is really helpful for us. And then also we get more grant and funding opportunities because of that.”

The school district has five schools for Pre-K to high school and a student career center.

At the end of August 2022, Franklin Preschool was given the rating of Gold Circle of Quality from ExceleRate, the highest rating for the program. It met or exceeded all benchmarks in all areas and followed all professional standards. It was the only preschool in the county that achieved this distinction.

A release from the school district said ExceleRate gives guidelines for early childhood education, saying this award opened the door for future achievements.

It rated the classrooms in four different areas: teaching and learning, family and community engagement, leadership and management, and staff qualifications. The Franklin preschool was monitored in October of 2021. Every single classroom was observed, all files were audited, teachers and staff were interviewed, and curriculums were examined.

The board will meet again at 7 p.m. on Oct. 11 at the Mattoon CUSD2 Board of Education Office on 17011 Charleston Avenue in Mattoon.

The Franklin Preschool is part of the ExceleRate program, which monitors all preschool programs in Illinois and provides feedback and status ratings. It monitors the programs every three years by coming into the classrooms, evaluating all parts of the program, and giving one of its four rating levels.