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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My child was in PEP Classic (4 days/week 3s) last year year, but I felt like there were too many extra breaks during the year so it wasn't consistent enough. If there's a late arrival, there's no PEP. If there's an early dismissal, there's no PEP. Plus, PEP gets an extra week or two of vacation during the year on top of starting a full week after the rest of MCPS starts. There's also no extended day option for children who have difficulty with regulation when classes are short. I thought PEP was far better for my child than the preschool my child was at before PEP, but it wasn't perfect.

During the summer, we found a program geared toward typically-developing children that were my child's age. My child's language developed far faster than it did at PEP (where  my child was the only native English speaker in the class, which didn't help for language development). I was very happy we made progression on language over the summer, but my child did not receive enough support in that classroom and my child began developing some severe anxiety issues.

We started Karasik of the Arc of Montgomery County in Silver Spring in August, which is the only private preschool with its on on-site PEP team. Technically, it's Montgomery County's "Building Bridges" program.  The services are provided as "PEP Itinerant" services, but instead of only a couple of hours services maximum per week for most PEP Itinerant itineraries, my child receives all of the hours of special education that are on his IEP (9 hours of SpEd + 1 hour speech each week).  The majority of these services are provided on a push-in basis in the regular Karasik (inclusive with a mix of typically-developing and special education-qualifying children) classroom. Additionally all the regular Karasik teachers (all of whom are certified early childhood education teachers, not just a day care 45-hour or 90-hour certification) and Karasik's preschool-age director, Sharon Hedgepeth, are very supportive and helpful with the needs of PEP students. I basically look at Karasik as 11 hours/day, year-round (only 12 days off each year) therapy. The progress my child has made there is astounding, and the PEP staff is a big part of it. However, I don't think my child would have made nearly as much progress had my child gone to PEP Classic again this year. Karasik's website is: http://thearcmontgomerycounty.org/what-we-do/children-youth/children.html

With all that being said, PEP is definitely a far better half-day preschool option for children who qualify than just about any other half-day preschool in the region. PEP is pretty much so good that there are very few private special needs preschools in the region, and these few preschools service a narrow range of needs.

I hope your move goes well![/quote]

NP. But you pay the full 'day care' rate to attend Karasik, right? IIRC it isn't any more than regular full time day care, but it's not free like PEP classic. [/quote]

Yes, I pay the full day-care rate, but Karasik has some grant programs that defray a small amount of cost of the day care. Also, if you qualify for LISS funding, then that could be $2,000 off the day care cost during a year.  That $2,000 is close almost two months of tuition for an older preschooler.

I also look at it like this: If we were to send our child to a regular day care and bus to/from PEP Classic, we would still have to pay the full day-care rate and have our child be in classrooms with upwards of 50 children per day. At Karasik, our child is with a consistent, small group of children everyday and we don't have to worry about our child having two different curricula, missing fun things at one school in favor for fun things at another school, or worry about whether the adult responsible at the day care to get our child on/off the PEP bus remembers to do so. So, Karasik is already one of the least expensive options in MoCo and it makes our lives a lot easier. It also has been so amazing for our child that we didn't feel like one of us had to quit our job and pay for a daily therapeutic social group program through Kennedy Krieger. We think that Karasik actually works better for our child than that program would.[/quote]

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