For Parents with a child in (or was in) MCPS afternoon PEP program

[Anonymous]

If you have or had a child in afternoon PEP (or a similar program) did you send your child to a typical pre-school in the morning? For those of you who did, how did the typical preschool accommodate the fact that your child had to eat lunch at the typical preschool before going to the PEP program. I think pickup at typical school will be around noon. PEP starts around 12:30 pm.

I'm just trying to figure out what other parents did. I know there are other students that have done the 2 school thing.

[Anonymous]

OP, you should check with the specific PEP class your child would be in about schedules. DS's PEP class last year (MK) had lunch as one of their daily activities (some of the children had lunch served and others, like DS, brought lunch). That said, DS was always starving after his morning school and so ate a sandwich every day on the drive from the NT morning preschool to his PEP class.

In terms of scheduling, the NT preschool did not get out til 12:15, but the bus would have come at 11:45, so we opted to hire a driver to drive DS from one school to the other. DS came home on the bus, and we had seriously the best bus driver in the world (we still miss her), who made the long bus ride fun.

[Anonymous]

OP here, DS will be in a collaborative program, no lunch is offered to his class. Lunch is offered to head start (am and pm) in the same school. I don't know what the bus schedule will be, I'm just guessing.

[Anonymous]

23:00 here. DS was also in a Collaboration class (Montgomery
Knolls). While lunch was not "provided" to the classified
children who didn't qualify for free or reduced lunch, lunch
WAS a daily activity in that the children all ate together
and the teacher worked on social skills and manners during
lunch. You should double check if it's the same in your
PEP Collab location.

[Anonymous]

Op here, That sounds great about learning to eat during class. I have checked. Actually my child goes to a non-PEP collaborative program, and there is no lunchtime during class. I asked about PEP because this program is so small, most children with SN go to PEP, but my child is in another program.

[Anonymous]

New poster. OP, you've got me confused. Virtually every PEP program offers lunch at 1:00. All of the PEP programs in the afternoon at my daughters school (and there are five different ones offered there) offer lunch. They are all non-collaborative. They all start at 1:00. My daughter eats her lunch at 1:00 every day as part of this. Maybe you need to call and do some checking?

[Anonymous]

Okay, now I see that you are saying your child will not be in PEP at all. Perhaps you could have shared that info in the first place. Not trying to be snarky, but why "hide the ball" and solicit all this information about how PEP works when it is virtually worthless to you. Why not just ask -- even on the General Info board -- how parents accommodate arrangements between two schools? You would probably get more responses.

[Anonymous]

OP here, my child is in the program for kids with physical disabilities, not PEP, there are only 5 students in it. So PEP is the closest thing to it. I didn't think the chances of finding one of the 5 SN students on DCUM was very likely. Until these posts, I did not know that it was that much different from PEP. It is a collaboration program with 5 kids with physical disabilities and 5 typical kids. They do not provide lunch at school. It meets 5 days a week.

It is at Forest Knolls School. It is fine for the 3 year olds which meet in the morning and go home for lunch, but when my child is 4 next year, class starts at 12:30, he has to be fed already and I want to send him to a typical preschool in the morning. Just trying to figure out the logistics. If it were not the perfect place for my son, I would consider seeing if I could get him into Montgomery Knolls Collaboration program just to get lunch figured out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, my child is in the program for kids with physical disabilities, not PEP, there are only 5 students in it. So PEP is the closest thing to it. I didn't think the chances of finding one of the 5 SN students on DCUM was very likely. Until these posts, I did not know that it was that much different from PEP. It is a collaboration program with 5 kids with physical disabilities and 5 typical kids. They do not provide lunch at school. It meets 5 days a week.

It is at Forest Knolls School. It is fine for the 3 year olds which meet in the morning and go home for lunch, but when my child is 4 next year, class starts at 12:30, he has to be fed already and I want to send him to a typical preschool in the morning. Just trying to figure out the logistics. If it were not the perfect place for my son, I would consider seeing if I could get him into Montgomery Knolls Collaboration program just to get lunch figured out.

Have you looked into Karasik? It is a childcare center with a preschool program and is an inclusion program for abled and disabled children. During the school year they have MoCo school bus pick up/drop off for Forest Knolls although I'm not sure about middle of the day. They are used to having children with different schedules with therapies, etc. so would probably be accommodating.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the suggestion. Actually I filled out an application there in case we need it. I think it is a good program, my child went to "summer camp" twice a week there last summer. But he never really liked it and didn't have enough language skills to tell me why, It may have been there were not enough trucks in his room, where trucks are the most important part of his life. (My child seemed to know where all the trucks in the other rooms were at Karasik. I hope to be back for "summer camp" again, but I will bring extra trucks in to make sure he feels at home. Or it may have been he only went 2 days a week and that was the problem.

The other issue is that we would be paying for full time care and using maybe 2.5 hours a day. Full time care is over $1000 per month and part-time preschool is $500 a month. So there is big difference.

About midday buses, the SN preschool program he is in would provide the transportation. There is one child in his class who uses bus transportation and he comes on a bus by himself, with a driver and an aid.

[Anonymous]

Karasik's full time program was only $830 a month last year. I don't think they
have increased since then.