A new preschool in the Menlo Park City School District will expand during the 2019-20 school year, Superintendent Erik Burmeister told the district's school board at a Feb. 12 meeting.

The preschool, called the Early Learning Center, or ELC, opened at Laurel School Lower Campus in Atherton in August with two classrooms.

The district will do some "minor retrofitting" of a classroom at Oak Knoll School in Menlo Park to add to the preschool next school year, Burmeister said at the meeting. He said the district will also add one more ELC classroom at the Laurel School site as well.

The district is expanding the preschool, which serves children just under 3 years old to 5 years old, to accommodate 44 more students next school year. Twenty-two more students will be at Laurel School site, while 22 more will be at Oak Knoll. The district may add more students than this because the school will offer two- and three-day options next year, Burmeister said in a Feb. 14 email.

"We are very excited to expand to a classroom at Oak Knoll to enable us to provide our high-quality early learning program to more families through the Menlo Park City School District," said Jessica Mihaly, ELC's founding director, in a Feb. 22 email.

The preschool enrolled 54 students during the 2018-19 school year. It planned to expand the program to 72 students next school year, but is likely to grow even more -- to about 88 students, Mihaly said.

The district surveyed Oak Knoll families to gauge interest in the preschool, and there was demand for extra spaces.

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