Kindergarten FAQs

Yes. Lakota is proud to offer all of our early learners an all-day kindergarten environment. 

Use Lakota’s interactive map to enter your address and view a listing of all the Lakota schools associated with your attendance zone. The following is a listing of all Lakota early childhood schools. 

All-day kindergarten classes meet from 9:10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

School fees are established in the spring for the following school year. Visit the student fees page for more information.

On average, there are 25 students per kindergarten classroom. 

In rare instances young children are already reading, counting, and categorizing, are developmentally advanced in thinking skills, language acquisition, and quantitative reasoning, and may be ready for early entrance into kindergarten or first grade. These children also need to be advanced in personal development and emotional maturity. 

Early entrance is a form of grade acceleration. A parent may request early admission to kindergarten if the child turns five after the district's deadline for kindergarten entrance. Any student turning five on or after Aug. 2 AND on or before Dec. 31 is eligible for the assessment process. 

The application for the following school year will be available on Lakota's Acceleration & Advancement webpage in early February with testing occurring in late May or early June. Requests submitted after the stated deadline will only be honored for those newly enrolled into the district.

Kindergarten phase-in days are designed to facilitate relationship building among our newest learners and their teachers. This approach also helps teachers to assess students' current levels academically, socially and emotionally and regroup, as necessary.

Phase-in days occur over the first four days of the school year, with each kindergartner attending twice during this time period. The first two days are divided alphabetically by last name. The last two days are divided by your student's homeroom teacher, with half the classes reporting one day and the other half the next day. The fifth day of school is a data analysis day for kindergarten staff, on which no kindergartners attend. 

Review Lakota's academic calendar for specific phase-in dates for the upcoming school year. A communication from your building principal will specify attendance expectations for phase-in days three and four, based on your child's assigned teacher. 

Beginning Feb. 1, incoming kindergartners can pre-register during the spring for the following school year. Early kindergarten registration extends through April 1. Your child must be 5 years old on or before August 1 of that year.

The registration process, which includes uploading required documents, is completed online. New parents are invited to any one of the available kindergarten information nights scheduled during early registration, as well as a "Welcome to Kindergarten" series. Visit the kindergarten registration page for complete details. 

Yes. To complete the enrollment process, you are required to provide your child's most recent record of immunization at the time of registration. We realize that summer birthdays may require more vaccinations, but the updated record can be brought to school once school begins. Ohio Revised Code and Lakota board policy state that any child who has not met enrollment requirements must be excluded from school.

All Lakota kindergarteners receive bus transportation. Bus route information is available in early August. At that time, you will be able to view your child's bus and teacher assignments for the upcoming school year on the registration page of Home Access Center (HAC). A link will be prominently posted from the district’s homepage when the information is available.

All students in Grades K-2 must submit a Transportation Form each year. Please visit the Alternative Transportation webpage for the specific deadline you must meet to receive transportation on the first day of school. 

While this form is completed through the online registration process, early childhood school students (grades K-2) are asked to complete the printed form as well. All alternative transportation plans are automatically cleared at the end of each school year and must be resubmitted each year. 

Home Access Center (HAC), accessible via OneLogin, is a communication tool to help keep students and parents up-to-date and in contact with their teachers throughout the year. Use HAC to find daily assignments and scores, report cards, attendance, and more. Families new to the district will receive their usernames and passwords by mail from their schools. 

Home Access Center is also available in a mobile app, allowing you to view all information from any mobile device. Visit the HAC landing page to learn more about how to take full advantage of this tool. 

Lakota is proud to offer a powerful mass notification system for delivering important school and district news and announcements via email, phone, and text message. 

All parent/guardian contact information is updated in FinalForms and then displayed in your Home Access Center account (which is our primary source of email addresses and phone numbers used to communicate classroom, school and district news). 

Once your Home Access Center (HAC) account is established, parents and guardians can select preferences for receiving general, emergency and weather-related alerts.

Click here for more information on how you can sign-up, view or change your communication preferences.