By CLARKE STACKHOUSE/ Shelby County Reporter

JEMISON – The new school year will bring a younger class of students to Jemison Elementary School with a new pre-K program beginning the first day of school.

The program is made possible by a grant from the Office of School Readiness. Chilton County Schools Federal Programs Director Adriane Dennis said this will be the second First Class voluntary pre-K program established in the county.

The school board received an OSR grant to start the pre-K program nine years ago at Clanton Elementary School and Dennis said she is grateful to be able to expand the program into the northern part of the county.

“We’ve been wanting to add another program and have been looking for the funding,” Dennis said. “So when OSR was looking to implement another program, we applied and were lucky to receive the funding to start the program at Jemison.”

Dennis said the OSR has specific guidelines for their programs to follow so the curriculum of the JES and CES programs will be identical.

JES is currently taking applications for the program until July 29 at the school office Monday-Thursday 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Interested students must provide proof of Chilton County residency and be 4-years-of-age on or before September 1.

Dennis said they will draw names from the registered participants on Aug. 1 at 8:15 and select 16 names for the new program. She said the JES program will start with one class but she hopes to see it grow like the CES program has, which now has five pre-K classes.

“We’ll start with just one, but if it grows like Clanton did we can hopefully add more in the future,” Dennis said. “We would eventually love to see all of our areas have a program like this.”

JES assistant Principal Meghan Owens said many parents have registered for the program and they except even more before the deadline.

“We’ve had people from Clanton, Jemison and Maplesville,” Owens said. “We’ve seen this program is touching all parts of the county.”

Weaver said the program will follow the same schedule as the school, but parents will have to provide transportation to and from school due to bus safety regulations.

OSR is part of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education and offers more than 200 voluntary pre-K programs throughout the state.