Abigail runs through an obstacle course as teacher Aliy Bossert, left, watches outside a city of Las Vegas pre-kindergarten mobile classroom Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. The city uses the mobile pre-K classrooms to provide low-income preschoolers with a high-quality preschool experience.
Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020 | 2 a.m.
The Strong Start Go Mobile Pre-K Academy on wheels doesn’t take preschoolers to outer space, but that doesn’t stop people from comparing it to the cartoon series, “The Magic School Bus.”
“Literally everyone I told about this job said, ‘You mean The Magic School Bus?’” said Alexandra Bossert, a preschool teacher who trained to drive a city-owned mobile classroom this week.
Monday through Thursday, Bossert will drive the bus to a Las Vegas parking lot, unpack the classroom, teach children for a couple of hours and then pack up the classroom to drive to a second location in a different neighborhood.
The mobile preschool program started in 2018 under the city’s youth development department to bring free preschool to child care deserts where low-income families lack access to early childhood education. Being mobile is crucial in reaching more neighborhoods.
With the coronavirus pandemic, child care deserts have expanded for Las Vegas families, city officials say. More than 70 child care centers in the community haven’t reopened for in-person learning, and many of those centers already had wait lists for their preschool programs. The mobile program, which is starting a second bus, is free and serves about 10 children at each stop. (It was 20 before pandemic-related limits.)
Giving disadvantaged families a head start is critical for local children, especially when hitting learning benchmarks such as the state’s Read By Grade 3 Act, officials said.
“We saw early learning centers as more day care,” said Tammy Malich, the city’s director of youth development and social innovation. “They were a place where kids went because parents had to work. We want to give kids a strong start on their education by giving them high quality preschool,” Malich said.
The city used census data to identify impoverished areas where there was a large number of children under age 5. One bus is open from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Doolittle Community Center parking lot then moves to Gary Reese Freedom Park from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The city is still determining which locations the second bus will serve.
Educators in the Strong Start Go Mobile Pre-K Academy have at least 10 years of teaching experience and follow a similar curriculum as used by the Clark County School District. Bossert has a master’s degree in early childhood education.
The classroom is organized into different learning centers including sensory, dramatic play, art, library, music and movement. There are pop-out walls on the sides of the trailer that expand the space, and tables and chairs that are folded-up before driving to the next location.
Bossert compared the mobile classroom to a toy from the 1980s — a life-size version of a tiny doll house inside of a makeup powder compact.
“It’s a little like Polly Pocket,” she said.
Krystle Turner, who has taught in the mobile program that past two years, says the bus makes the experience less intimidating for preschoolers than their parents dropping them off at a large building.
“I would like to think this environment is more inviting to them,” she said.
Martha Jimenez, whose 5-year-old son Osiris has been in the program for a year, signed him up for the classes so kindergarten wasn’t a shock. Once the pandemic hit, she sent him back to “have some sense of normalcy.”
See here for more information on the program.
