In 2014 the Lake Placid Central School District (LPCSD) established a partnership with St. Agnes School (SAS) to make available full day Universal Pre-K (UPK) to all four-year-olds in Lake Placid, New York. Please click here to access St. Agnes School's website.

The Lake Placid UPK earned high scores in the comprehensive 2015 NYSED quality assurance protocol. The UPK teaching staff at St. Agnes is proficient in the guidelines set forth by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), Developmentally Appropriate Practices (OAP), and the Response to Intervention (RTI). The program offers a curriculum aligned with the NYS Pre­-Kindergarten Foundation for the Common Core.

In each of the past two years, LPCSD and SAS have refined instructional methods to ensure that the learning environment enriches four-year ­olds’ development through play, social interaction, and exploration of the world around them. After only one year, LPES Kindergarten and specials teachers offered anecdotal evidence that UPK is achieving immediate results: Kindergarten students demonstrate an improved ability to follow directions, work independently, manage transitions, sustain attention, and draw on problem-solving and organizational skills to complete classroom assignments.

Additionally, assessing and benchmarking preschoolers before they start Kindergarten creates a critical efficiency in identifying those students who will benefit from services through the Committee of Special Education, as well as a number of support programs and services available through Essex County and NYS.

Curriculum

The academic sequence for preschoolers includes learning how to spell and identify one’s name, the ABC’s, letter sounds, number identification, counting, quantity discrimination, and shape names – all while developing listening, speaking and social skills. With a “whole child” approach, the curriculum, instructional methods, and schedule support school­ readiness & development, instill confidence, and facilitate the social-emotional growth essential for success in elementary school.