As the oldest daughter in a family of 11 children, Betsy Voermans always had a strong mothering instinct. For 35 years, she used her gift to nurture scores of youngsters at the Oconto Falls Area Preschool, helping them develop independence and kindergarten-readiness skills.
“I adore it,” she said, describing what it’s like to spend every morning with 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. “I have a lot of patience.”
“She’s touched so many lives over the years and is really special to countless people in the area,” said Tiffany Alfson, president of the Oconto Falls Area Preschool.
The announcement of Voermans’ retirement set in motion a search for her replacement, but the preschool board was unable to find a qualified teacher to lead the program. According to Alfson, Voermans “went above and beyond in the past, asking little in return.”
It was Voermans’ idea to ask St. Anthony School to “adopt” the preschool, which has had various homes since its incorporation in 1969.
“When I was retiring, I felt so strongly that we need to keep the program in town,” she said.
St. Anthony formed a committee in February to study its options, and Principal Rosie Marifke talked with other Catholic school officials already running preschool programs. What she heard was encouraging.
“They felt it was beneficial for their overall school atmosphere,” she said.
Marifke said she witnessed the effectiveness of the preschool program first-hand as graduates of the preschool entered kindergarten at St. Anthony.
“I felt the preschool program … has done so much for so many students coming in,” she said. “It gives them an opportunity to learn those skills necessary for school.”
St. Anthony’s Finance Council and School Board approved the preschool plan, and registration for the 2014-15 school year started this spring.
The Oconto Falls Area Preschool, which meets at Grace Lutheran Church, will fold at the end of this school year, and classes will start in September at St. Anthony.
Alfson said the preschool’s closure was inevitable.
“It was a unanimous decision once we found out how hard it would be to find a qualified teacher,” she said.
She noted several advantages in offering the preschool at the Catholic school.
“It will be more of a classroom setting,” she said. “They won’t have to go from room to room, and they won’t have to put up dividers.”
The preschool now sections off an area in the basement of Grace Lutheran for playtime and large group activities, then meets in smaller classrooms for snack, art projects and small-group instruction. Having a classroom delegated solely for preschool instruction will eliminate the need to move room dividers, pack equipment and tidy up, so the room is available for the congregation’s weekend events.
“It is a positive change that we’re excited about,” Alfson said.
St. Anthony will run a nondenominational Christian preschool for 3- and 4-year-old children; students do not need to be Catholic to attend. Fifteen children are already enrolled, according to Marifke. Twenty-nine families have their children in the program at Grace Lutheran now, with 16 attending three days a week and 13 two days a week.
The preschool is now run as a parent cooperative, which requires parents to volunteer in the classroom, but the structure might change at St. Anthony. The Diocese of Green Bay requires volunteers to attend a training session in which they learn how to recognize and react to abuse, and background checks are required.
“Those are things we have to work out yet,” Marifke said about volunteer opportunities.
A class schedule hasn’t been finalized and is dependent on the number of students enrolled. St. Anthony plans to offer a schedule similar to the current one. Classes meet either twice weekly, on Tuesday and Thursday, or three times, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
St. Anthony set the annual tuition at $650 for two days a week and $800 for three. The current rates are $495 and $675, respectively.
Marifke said St. Anthony students will interact with the preschool kids for art projects, stories, snack and other activities, similar to how the fifth-graders help occasionally in the 4K classroom now.
“It gives the older kids some time to think about patience and helping out, and the little kids, well, they just love the big kids,” Marifke said.
St. Anthony will hire a teacher for morning preschool classes and afternoon 4-year-old kindergarten classes, now taught by Voermans.
St. Anthony was home to the Oconto Falls Area Preschool once before. After the Franciscan nuns of Manitowoc left their upstairs residence at the school in 1987, the preschool moved in, staying until 2005, when it relocated to Grace Lutheran.
Categories
