A new program was added to the Blue Valley family to help preschool students starting school in August.
Hilltop Campus is an early childhood program which replaced preschools from all the BV elementary schools and combined them in one building.
According to the Hilltop Campus website, it provides the resources needed to help the districts’ children grow mentally in their early years of developmental stages.
“Any child in the district, between the ages of 3 and the year they’re kindergarten-eligible can enroll,” Hilltop Campus principal Kendall Burr said. “Our children, who are typically developing, come from the community and just sign up. About half of our students have some kind of a special need that we are working on.”
Students who enroll have to be able to speak fluent English, be restroom independent and meet the age requirements.
The building has two programs for the students enrolling. One includes students who have speech and language difficulties. The other is peer model, applying to all other developmental areas.
“About half of the kids here have an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP),” Burr said.
Burr said most of the classrooms in the building are multi-categorical, which means they accept anyone who walks into the building.
The cost for IEP students are the current district requirements — $100 with a $15 technology fee — while peer model students have to pay $12 per day.
“It was a little bit of a change, and in some ways it’s not,” Burr said. “Half of our preschools are in this building. We actually have 26 classrooms in the district, and 15 of them are here. The big change overall has been having more classrooms together, and that’s been really exciting.”
