New kindergarten will teach WSU students

Somewhere, Tod and Maxine ­McClaskey are smiling.

In a week, Washington State University Vancouver will break ground to expand its Child Development Program, thanks to a $1.5 million gift from their foundation. And by 2010, the university will add a cutting-edge all-day kindergarten program.

“We all have kids, and we all knew Tod and Maxine, and knew how much they loved kids and how much emphasis they put on education,” said Brett Bryant, a board member of the Tod and Maxine McClaskey Foundation. “They were fairly clear in their foundation bylaws that health care and education were big strike-zone areas.”

For now, WSU intends to have at least one all-day kindergarten class. This would be a private program, requiring tuition.

The cost hasn’t yet been determined, though Professor Karen Peterson estimates parents would pay about $850 or $900 a month.

Peterson, who oversees the Child Development Program, hopes the curriculum developed could serve as a model for nearby public schools. Gov. Chris Gregoire has said she hopes to extend all-day kindergarten to every school in the state; as of now, only the lowest-income schools have full-day classes.

The curriculum hasn’t been firmed up, but Peterson said it won’t look like traditional kindergarten. Instead of focusing on one letter a week, students work around a theme — for example, how plants work — that blends in the arts, music and movement.

“We let them come up with questions on their own, and we help them come up with answers,” Peterson said. “Their brains are still in the process of integrating information. They get a way of learning that’s more suited to them physiologically.”

And, unlike a typical kindergarten day, this class will have early morning and after-school day care. The extended care will mirror the school day, possibly with the same staff and classroom.

The Child Development Program currently houses programs for preschool-aged children and is a sort of lab for WSU students: Nursing students perform hearing and vision tests on preschool children, psychology students use the observation booths and engineering students are designing a big toy.

The Human Development building, where the child care program is located, will be renamed the McClaskey Building. The children will be participating in the actual groundbreaking next week.

Tod McClaskey co-founded the Red Lion hotel chain with Ed Pietz in the late 1950s. McClaskey died in 2003 at age 91. Maxine McClaskey died in 2005.

“They hired so many people for this Red Lion enterprise that they saw the value of education,” Bryant said. “And they hired a lot of WSU graduates because WSU has a hospitality program.”

Though the grant expires in five years, Bryant said, other donors may step in.

“Sometimes, whenever you get a large donation can sometimes foster other interested like-minded philanthropists,” he said.

Isolde Raftery can be reached at 360-735-4546 or isolde.raftery@columbian.com.