FAIRMONT — Fairmont Area School’s Kindergarten round-up will be Tuesday, March 16, from 4-7 p.m. The open house is for families with a child entering kindergarten in the fall.

Both of Fairmont Elementary’s co-principals, Michelle Rosen and Andy Traetow, will be at the event.

“Parents and kids come in. They can talk to the kindergarten teachers and go into the classrooms,” Rosen said.

“It’s really to start creating that awareness and increasing the comfort level for not only our students but our parents as the student enters their first full-day education experience. For many of our parents, it may be their first time having a child go through our education system,” Traetow said.

He went on to say that if they provide more opportunities for families to ask questions, and work to increase comfort levels for both students and parents, it will allow for a better start to the school year for everyone.

Fairmont has offered a full-day kindergarten program for many years and several years ago, the state increased funding for early childhood and early learning opportunities in order to support full-day kindergarten state-wide.

All six kindergarten teachers will be at the open house. They will be able to talk about different academic expectations as well as classroom expectations.

“For the third consecutive year, we will maintain six full sections of kindergarten. Prior to that, we had been operating on only five sections of kindergarten,” Traetow said.

Traetow said the stability in enrollment is a positive for the Fairmont Area School District. This school year there are 124 kindergarten students across six sections, with 20 or 21 students in each classroom.

“We’re very fortunate as a district to be in a situation to focus on keeping those class sizes as low as possible,” Traetow said.

Traetow said most incoming kindergarten students come from some type of preschool experience.

Rosen said they have 80 students in Fairmont Elementary’s preschool program who, for the most part, will enter the kindergarten program there as well.

“One of the great things about Minnesota is that there are a lot of options for your education. Kids aren’t required to stay here, but most continue to attend Fairmont Elementary,” Traetow said.

He said they have a great relationship with area parochial schools that also have preschool and early learning programs.

“It’s a great asset to our community that families have options,” Traetow said.

Rosen said they also plan to have Kinderprep this year.

“It’s a week in July for kids that are coming to kindergarten to have an in-person experience for the week. We weren’t able to have it last year with Covid, but our plan is to be able to have it this year by the end of July.”

Rosen said it’s the next layer of getting used to being in the school building for both parents and students before the school year starts.

Online registration for kindergarten is now open on the district’s website, fairmont.k12.mn.us. Fairmont Elementary’s computer lab also will be open the night of Kindergarten round-up for registration purposes.