09/05/2026
I want to share something with our families and our community, and I want to do it personally and transparently.
After a lot—and I mean a LOT—of thought, conversations, number crunching, and honestly some soul searching, Young Scholars Academy has made the decision to participate in Colorado Universal Preschool (UPK).
If you’ve followed us for a while, you probably know this wasn’t an automatic decision for me.
I’ve spent decades in early childhood education. I’ve watched trends come and go, regulations change, funding change, and the expectations placed on early childhood programs grow tremendously.
But one thing has never changed:
Really good preschool is hard to do.
It takes incredible teachers. It takes experienced leadership. It takes curriculum, assessments, training, materials, security, insurance, maintenance, food, playgrounds, technology, licensing, accreditation, and about a thousand other things behind the scenes that families may never see.
And it takes a building.
Our property tax bill alone includes approximately $52,000 going to our surrounding school district every year—the same public school system that is now able to provide UPK-funded preschool and compete with private programs like ours for the same four-year-olds.
As a small-business owner who has spent decades building and continually reinvesting in a private early childhood program, I’ll be transparent:
That’s been a hard pill to swallow.
But here’s the other side of that conversation.
Those are your tax dollars, too.
Our families are buying $7 cheese.
They’re filling their cars with $4-a-gallon gas.
They’re paying mortgages, rent, insurance, groceries, utilities, medical bills, and everything else that seems to cost considerably more than it did just a few years ago.
And they’re looking at preschool tuition and asking, How are we supposed to do all of this?
I hear you.
At some point, this decision stopped being about whether I personally loved every aspect of UPK and became about something much more important:
How do we continue to partner with our families?
If there is a benefit available to you as a Colorado family that can help ease some of that financial pressure, I don’t want Young Scholars standing between you and that benefit simply because I have concerns about the system behind it.
You paid into it, too.
So, yes.
Young Scholars Academy is moving forward with UPK.
And we’re going to work very hard to give our families the benefit of UPK without sacrificing the quality of preschool we’ve spent decades building.
Because UPK funding doesn’t magically replace everything it costs to operate a high-quality early childhood program.
When you walk into YSA and see updated flooring, improved lighting, maintained classrooms, beautiful learning materials, safe playgrounds, security systems, experienced administrators, and teachers who genuinely know and love your children—that doesn’t happen by accident.
We continually reinvest in this school.
Sometimes that means something exciting everyone notices.
Sometimes it means replacing something very expensive nobody notices.
Sometimes it’s paint, flooring, lighting, equipment, technology, curriculum or classroom materials.
Sometimes it’s investing in teacher education, training and professional development.
And sometimes it’s simply making sure the people caring for and educating your child every day can build a career doing work that matters.
Quality costs money.
I don’t say that apologetically. I say it because after all these years, I know exactly what it takes to operate a great preschool.
Young Scholars has never set out to simply be the cheapest option.
We want to be the place where we know your child.
Where your child’s teacher truly knows them.
Where families have relationships with the people running the school.
Where kindergarten readiness means more than memorizing letters and numbers.
Where children learn confidence, independence, empathy, problem solving, friendship, communication and how to be part of a community.
And where we never stop asking ourselves how we can make this place better for the children and families who trust us.
That’s the Young Scholars I intend to protect as we enter this next chapter.
I also want to set realistic expectations about what happens next.
Becoming a participating UPK provider isn’t as simple as us flipping a switch on Monday morning. There is a state-side process that has to happen before everything is completely situated, and that process can take up to approximately a month.
We’re working through it now.
We’ll communicate with our families as we move through the process and share more information about eligibility, enrollment, funding and exactly what UPK will look like at Young Scholars as those pieces are finalized.
What I don’t want to do is rush ahead of the process, promise something before the state has it situated, or leave families wondering what’s happening behind the scenes.
We made the decision.
We’re doing the work.
And we’re going to figure out how to make this benefit work for our families without changing what makes Young Scholars, Young Scholars.
I may not love every part of the system.
I may still have concerns.
But I love this school, I believe deeply in high-quality early childhood education, and I believe in listening when our families tell us what they need.
Right now, families need some relief.
So if there’s a way for us to help provide that relief while continuing to give children the preschool experience they deserve, we’re going to try.
Thank you to the families who have trusted Young Scholars Academy with their children over all these years—and thank you for continuing to trust us as we navigate something new.
We’re excited about what’s ahead.
-Jenn, Executive Director
