Madison Reporter

The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) is set to hold virtual information sessions for families interested in enrolling their children in the four-year-old kindergarten (4K) program for the 2025–26 school year. These sessions, organized by the MMSD Department of Early Learning, will take place on Thursday, January 16.

English-speaking families can attend sessions at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., and 7 p.m., while a session in Spanish will be available at 6 p.m. All meetings will be conducted via Zoom, and registration is required through a linked Google Form. Recordings of these sessions will later be accessible on the MMSD website.

Culleen Witthuhn, MMSD’s director of early learning, emphasized the importance of these sessions for prospective families: “Prospective 4K families are new to everything that comes with enrolling in school, and we recognize that the process can be daunting for some,” she said. “These information sessions provide answers to many of the questions that they may have, laying out what our 4K program entails and what they need to do to get their student(s) enrolled.”

MMSD aims to expand its tuition-free 4K programming based on play-based learning standards. This initiative is part of the district's broader equity projects, which also focus on increasing mental health support, reducing class sizes for kindergarten and first grade, and developing community schools and village builders initiatives.

“The goal is to engage students and instill in them what we hope will be a lifelong love of learning,” added Witthuhn. “Our 4K students have the advantage of gaining classroom experience as early as possible, which translates to real benefits as they continue along their school-based journeys.”

Families interested in enrolling their children can begin online enrollment for both 4K and five-year-old kindergarten (5K) on February 24, with in-person enrollment starting March 3. Further details about early learning programs are available on the MMSD website.