About Us

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District Early Childhood Education Program is provided at nine elementary school sites.  The program is centered upon a high-quality classroom experience for all children.  Our preschool curricular materials are aligned to the curricula adopted for the elementary grades to maximize successful transitions from preschool to kindergarten.  Program enhancements include Parent and Child Together (PaCT) Activities, Parent Education, School Readiness Nurses, Adult Education, and research-based Professional Development for Staff.   Our Preschool children engage in high-quality learning experiences in a positive and caring environment in which diversity (cultural, linguistic, individual interests and abilities) is respected.  Meaningful parent involvement is actively fostered, as parents play an integral role in their child’s educational experience.  Preschool children and families build positive relationships and develop skills that will enable them to transition to kindergarten with confidence and success.

Our Vision for Student Success

Preschool Children in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Early Childhood Education Program will enter the K-12 system ready to meet or exceed grade-level standards.  The benefits of the high-quality early childhood education provided by N-MUSD will foster success throughout the K-12 system and beyond. 

Our Program Philosophy

We believe that a high-quality preschool program provides children with a broad range of experiences to develop age-appropriate skills in social-emotional, language, literacy, cognitive, and motor developmental domains.

We believe that developmentally appropriate practice is purposeful, playful, and planned. 

We believe that every child should experience preschool as a place with caring adults who are fully engaged with children’s learning throughout the instructional day.

We believe that families are important in the educational process and we strive to engage all families in meaningful partnerships and respectful two-way communication.

We recognize the California Preschool Learning Foundations as our roadmap in planning instruction to build a strong foundation for kindergarten entry.  A variety of individual, small-group, and whole group activities is used to build these foundations.

We utilize research-based curricula (Houghton Mifflin Pre-K, Hampton Brown Avenues, and Second Step) to plan instructional activities that will support the development of age-appropriate skills, as outlined in the California Preschool Learning Foundations.

We believe that information gained from classroom assessments of individual children should be used to plan for instruction.

We are committed to the inclusion of children with special needs with their typically-developing peers at our preschool sites.

We are committed to continual professional growth for all preschool staff as we strive to learn and grow as new research is published in the field of early childhood education.