The 2026-2027 school year is still eight months away, but districts across the Pittsburgh region have already started to enroll new kindergarteners.

Local school leaders say they want to meet with students and their families as early as possible to smooth the transition to kindergarten — both for the sake of the students and their teachers.

In Westmoreland County, Greater Latrobe and Derry Area school districts are meeting regularly with preschool providers to understand the needs of incoming kindergartners. The districts launched a Regional Early Childhood Consortium this fall that brings preschool and kindergarten educators together to discuss school readiness and literacy.

“Kindergarten readiness is difficult. It has changed over the years,” said Becki Pellis, who oversees elementary education at Greater Latrobe School District.

Casey Long, assistant superintendent at Derry Area, said schools are also seeing more behavior management issues, socialization challenges and developmental delays. He and Pellis work with preschools to connect younger students to school-based services, even before they are old enough to enroll.

“We are all using the same services so that we can get whatever the families need, so that their kids are ready to come to our public schools when they turn five,” Pellis said.

Pellis said she also works with early childhood centers to emphasize the importance of registering kindergarteners far in advance of the first day of school. She and other district leaders say the sooner families enroll, the better schools can prepare.

Brittany Linsenbigler, director of student services at Sto-Rox School District, just outside of Pittsburgh, said early enrollment allows teachers to assess students’ abilities and tailor curricula to meet their individual needs.

“There’s a lot of effort, staffing, planning that goes into making sure that we can support our students where they are when they come through the door,” she said. “So the earlier that students can enroll, the better we have an idea of numbers to staff for teachers, paraprofessionals.”

Linsenbigler said the district is always preparing for students who do not enroll until after the first day of school, although their ability to do so is more limited. This school year, nearly one in five kindergarteners at Sto-Rox Primary Center weren’t enrolled until after the first day of school.

According to countywide data collected by the nonprofit Trying Together, only three in four Allegheny County kindergarteners were enrolled before the first day of school in 2023.

Randy Miller, director of curriculum instruction at Laurel Highlands School District in Fayette County, said his district continues to push the message of early enrollment to families through local preschools and daycares. Students who have not attended any sort of pre-kindergarten program, however, are difficult to reach.

Miller said roughly one in five of the district’s 200 incoming kindergartners each year have not attended pre-K.

Just over a quarter of four-year-olds in the commonwealth attended a pre-K program during the 2023-2024 school year, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.

“Quite honestly, the lowest scoring students in kindergarten are students that have not attended any type of pre-K program,” Miller said. “So we try to reach those families.”

Removing barriers

That’s why districts like Laurel Highlands have employed creative solutions to expand their outreach to new kindergarten families. Miller said school leaders place placards advertising kindergarten registration throughout the community. A featured QR code takes families directly to the district’s online registration portal.

The district also directs new families to its Mini-Might Mustangs program, an early literacy initiative launched in 2015. The program distributes books to the area’s youngest learners and employs students from the local high school to serve as pre-K mentors.

At Sto-Rox, Larette McCoy brings kindergarten applications to the local youth football field and daycare graduation ceremonies. McCoy, site manager for the primary center’s Community in Schools program, said she’s also partnering with the McKees Rocks Health Center to encourage families to register for the district.

“Whatever feels comfortable for them. I’ll come to their house, whatever they want, and I will sit down and support them,” McCoy said.

Linsenbigler said the district is working to move its registration process entirely online so that more families can easily access it. Families must have their child’s birth certificate, vaccination records and proof of residency to register.