Jarod Opperman / The BulletinKindergartners enjoy a Thanksgiving lunch at Sage Elementary School in Redmond last fall. The Redmond School District plans to open an early education center in the fall. It will house kindergartners from Redmond, a preschool and eventuallly hopes to host more programs and services for younger children.

The Redmond School District is preparing to open an early education center in the fall, a new model for the region and one the district hopes will pay off for students down the line.

The center in the former Hugh Hartman Middle School building will house all kindergartners in Redmond, up to 500 of them, as well as the Title I preschool program currently at Vern Patrick Elementary School. Kindergarten classes in Terrebonne and Tumalo will stay in those communities.

In its first year, the building will be dominated by kindergartners who will then have to move to another school the next year for first grade, an aspect some parents may question.

But officials hope to host more programs and services there for younger children in the future, including a special education preschool program run by High Desert Education Service District and Early Head Start for babies up to age 3. There could also be resources for families, possibly parenting classes or nutrition classes for pregnant moms in partnership with St. Charles Health System.

“We don’t want it to be a one-year program,” said Desiree Margo, the center’s planning principal. “The vision of the center is really an (ages) 0 to 6 vision and model, of supporting earlier and building relationships with our families earlier.”

It is a model that has been introduced in other parts of the state. Redmond officials visited such centers in Portland and Gladstone and will go to Pendleton next week to see a repurposed elementary school that now houses preschool and kindergarten.

The Redmond center will be the first in Central Oregon.

Redmond Proficiency Academy, a charter school, currently houses its middle school at the former Hartman school building. Its lease is up at the end of the school year and RPA is building a new school down the block.

Over the summer the district will remodel Hartman to meet the needs of smaller students.

Moving kindergarten out of the elementary schools will alleviate crowding issues there, though Margo notes that was not the primary reason for opening the early learning center. Instead, the district is hoping to improve student outcomes in later years — reading scores by third grade, even high school graduation rates — by investing in early education.

“We make choices about where we invest, and we can invest early or we can invest late,” Margo said. “Really, in the Redmond district, we want a different result. We want more of kids graduating and being successful.”

The school board will vote Jan. 27 on a proposed name, the Redmond Early Learning Center at Hugh Hartman.

In the coming months, Margo will be meeting with staff to talk about the changes. For kindergarten teachers used to working with two or three colleagues, it may be an adjustment to be in a building full of them.

Margo will also be touring parent-teacher groups and is likely to face many questions.

“I think kindergartners need a lot of really good role models, and they’re not going to have that. It’s going to be a school full of kindergartners,” said Christy Lytle, of Redmond, whose daughter who will be in kindergarten this fall.

Lytle’s son is a second-grader at Tom McCall Elementary School, and she was hoping the children would be in the same building next year. Lytle said she is also worried her daughter won’t be in a kindergarten class with the same students who will be in her first-grade class.

She is now looking at private kindergarten options.

“Is she going to have to be make all new friends?” she said. “I’ve been hoping all year long that this was going to implode, quite frankly, and then I wouldn’t need to worry about it.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7837,

aspegman@bendbulletin.com