Gonzales Preschool is a parent participation preschool that employs both an Early Childhood Educator (ECE) and an ECE Assistant. Our progressive cooperative model helps children establish warm, trusting relationships with other caring adults, all the while providing meaningful opportunities for parent involvement. This facilitates a smooth transition from home to school, and helps parents meet other families.

The additional support of the ECE Assistant provides consistency for the children, and more one-on-one care and support from qualified teachers. It also helps to meet the needs of busy families by allowing for fewer parent duty days and a lighter workload when on duty.

Full Parent Participation

If a family chooses to enroll with full participation the family is required to:

• attend preschool as a duty parent approximately every six weeks based on full enrollment
• fulfill a job within the school i.e. fundraising committee, scheduling, making play dough, or a position on our executive
• help with one of the two major school clean-ups throughout the school year
• participate in our main fundraising event: the Annual Silent Auction
• attend monthly meetings, which includes a parent education session followed by a business meeting. Meetings are on the second Thursday of each month from 7pm to 9pm.

Limited Parent Participation

If a family chooses to enroll with limited participation the family is required to:

• fulfill a job within the school i.e. fundraising committee, scheduling, making play dough, or a position on our executive
• help with one of the two major school clean-ups throughout the school year
• participate in our main fundraising event: the Annual Silent Auction
• attend monthly business meetings on the second Thursday of each month from 8pm to 9pm.

Classroom Duty Days

Duty days are a wonderful chance to be involved in your child’s education and to see your child interacting with others in the classroom. The duty parent also aids the ECEs by alleviating many of the routine daily tasks and allowing the ECEs to focus more on the children’s educational experience.

In general, the duty parent starts 15 minutes before class begins and finishes about 15 minutes after class ends. The duty parent will fulfill tasks such as preparing the snack, helping children with the day’s projects and cleaning/tidying the room.

Families are required to take 10 hours of training before taking on their responsibilities as duty parents due to licensing requirements. Fulfilling these prerequisites is easy: the duty parent must attend a fall orientation evening, a shadow day, and monthly meeting (attending both the education session and business portion). Duty parents are required to have a current criminal record check.