Prep and Prep+ Accelerated Program challenges students
Ashton DeMoss learned a couple of things in fourth-grade math last year at River Ridge Elementary School, but she pretty much breezed through it.
 | | Fifth-grader Adam Chen taking a high level math class at Turkey Foot Middle School. Photo by The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy. |
When offered the challenge of taking math as a fifth-grader this year at Turkey Foot Middle School, she welcomed it.
"I had a lot of questions, like how I was going to get there," she said. "But I was excited. A little nervous, but excited."
Ashton is one of a couple of hundred students in the Kenton County School District this year in the new Prep and Prep+ Accelerated Academic Program.
It enables students in grades 5-12 who are classified as gifted based on various assessments to move up a grade level in math or English coursework.
Students in English Prep, English Prep+ and Math Prep stay in their current classrooms but receive a more challenging accelerated curriculum.
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Read 180 program changes lives 
Lacy was reading at just a first-grade level. She knew some short words based on their shapes, such as "the" and "yes," but not much more.
Lacy had struggled to read her entire
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Lacy Dalton. Photo by The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy. |
life, but always managed to maneuver her way through it. She thought she could do the same in high school, but quickly figured out that wasn't going to happen.
Now, after one year of using an intervention program called Read 180, the 16-year-oldsophomore has jumped six grade levels and now reads on par with a seventh-grader. She has read "The Hunger Games" series and is now starting the "Twilight" books.
With new state assessment and accountability measures in place this year that focus on students becoming college
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All Pro Dad program highlights the special relationship between dads and children
Mike Milton and his 10-year-old son, Jack, had to wake up and head to school a little earlier than usual on Tuesday morning, but their breakfast together - and the conversation that ensued - made it well worth it.
 | | Father and daughter in the new All Pro program. Photo by The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy. |
The father-son duo joined about 50 dads and their children for breakfast at Kenton Elementary School bright and early on Tuesday for the kick off of the school's All Pro Dad program.
As part of the national program, which is sponsored by Florida-based nonprofit Family First, fathers and their children gather for breakfast once a month to bond, and discuss topics like peer pressure, goal setting and caring for the less fortunate through a variety of program materials.
Kenton Elementary, the first school here in Northern Kentucky to offer the program, started its chapter with a bang, according to Melody Simms, the school's Family Resource Center coordinator.
Continue to read about how this program, endorsed by the NFL and National PTA, brings fathers and children together for quality time. |
