It’s a small crew, embarked on this first voyage across the wide open sea of North Kansas City Schools’ new Early Education Center.

But the thrill of first adventures fills these warm learning spaces with the promise of so many more adventures in store for the hundreds of children who will follow them here in the years to come.

Many “first successes” happen here, said principal Sarah Monfore. She sees the child “who takes their first step . . . makes their first friend, says their first word . . . ” and who will “walk into kindergarten” confident and ready.

So goes “the joy” of watching the more than 300 pre-schoolers, three and four years old, who in January were the first to see what DLR Group architects and the district’s design team did with this former retail space at 6479 N. Prospect in Gladstone, said program director Katie Lawson.

More than 1,000 children will fill the center when it reaches its capacity, Lawson said, and more than ever North Kansas City Schools is primed to give “every child a quality start on their educational journey.”

The school district, which needed to consolidate and expand its varied early childhood programs, was able to purchase the vacant Hobby Lobby and Price Chopper retail spaces for $4 million. And in June 2020, district residents passed a $155 million bond issue dedicating $24 million to the early childhood project.

The community and the district leadership were unified in their belief in the power of early education, Lawson said.

And she was quoting Assistant Superintendent Chad Evans, she said, when she called the early childhood center “the heartbeat of the district.”

“We touch every family,” she said.

Said Monfore: “We want their first experience to be positive. We want them to remember us when they are in high school.”

The center is designed with the notion that education can be sparked and experienced anywhere. Classrooms are separated not by solid walls but by windows that spread the classes’ energy into expansive hallways, which hold surprising nooks and crannies.

These creative outlets evoke “mountaintops,” “caving spaces” and “campfires,” Lawson said.

The teachers were given a peek at the new center in December, special education teacher Megan Smith said.

“Everyone was oohing and ahhing,” she said.

The center brings multiple early learning programs and professionals together to make collaboration easier than ever for teachers, physical and occupational therapists, and speech therapists, Smith said.

Previously, the programs were always struggling against being siloed, Monfore said. Pre-K classrooms were scattered among elementary schools, with a special education program in Pleasant Valley, a Title I program in another building, a tuition-based classed in Staley High School, and others.

District families can contact the early education department at 816-321-5250 to be screened for the opportunity to enroll children into the nearly 900 slots for free programming, and there are also tuition-paid slots available. Information is also available on the district’s early education webpage.

“This building is an amazing gift,” Lawson said. “It honors the professionals in our building — the teachers, the nurses, the therapists — and the families we serve.”

And they are “breaking down barriers,” Manfore said. “We are re-imagining what we didn’t know was possible.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer

Video edited by Bryan Shepard