Stone Soup Fresno helps immigrant families by offering a top-rate preschool | Opinion
Most of us are from an immigrant family or are immigrants ourselves. Nonetheless the battle about whether immigrants are a blessing or a hardship continues to be a controversy.
Fresno is fortunate to have an agency that has been working with immigrant families for 33 years and includes a high quality preschool among its achievements.
Stone Soup Fresno is located in the El Dorado neighborhood near Fresno State, and was originally founded as a refugee resettlement agency for Southeast Asian families to help them assimilate to their new world.
Many of these families were from the Hmong people, a specific culture with its own language and history. They lived in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Burma (now Myanmar) and helped the United States during the Vietnam War. When the United States left Vietnam in 1975, many Hmong fled to America.
Founder Kathy Garabed retired in 2010, but from the beginning early education was an important part of the program she developed. In 2016, Stone Soup Fresno launched its state-licensed Early Education Preschool for children ages 3 to 5. Families who are income- eligible do not pay any preschool tuition; this accounts for 92% of current enrolled families. The other 8% of families pay a Family Fee averaging $100 per month.
The preschool is open year-round, Monday through Friday, from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. This schedule was designed to accommodate working families and parents enrolled in higher education. The preschool has four classrooms that can accommodate 24 children each, with three teachers to a class. The student population is about 38% Hispanic, 31% Hmong, and one-third other — including Black, white, Middle Eastern and mixed race.
Opinion
Kindergarten preparedness is important and the foundation of learning stems from the Creative Curriculum for Preschool. It empowers children to be confident, creative, and caring learners through play-based, hands-on investigations — a research-based approach that incorporates language, literacy, and mathematics throughout the day.
Paired with academic learning are age-appropriate lessons about our diverse community. opics such as culture and traditions, languages, arts, food, and clothes are covered. Meals are representative of the different cultures of the students who attend the preschool.
The school encourages diverse lessons to foster cultural awareness and respect for all in our youngest generation.
May Gina Her, executive director since 2018, says “Our work is to serve families and children every day because we believe we can achieve a world in which every person is respected and families have the resources they need to cultivate growth and positive change.”
The school combines academic learning with lessons that introduce the children to the diverse community. The hope is that “someday these preschool children will see, hear, and learn of other cultures and languages and remember that they learned a few things about diversity when they were at Stone Soup Fresno,” she says.
The preschool serves family meals at breakfast and lunch that emphasize good table manners, helping to serve others, polite conversation and appreciation of others’ customs. The school has been rated 4 Stars out of 5 in the Early Stars Quality Preschool designation from the Fresno County Office of Education.
Other programs available to the community include workforce developmentto help adults identify their skills and obtain new ones. Children can also participate in a Hmong dual-language after school program called
Learn Hmong. This program provides Hmong language instruction and lessons on Hmong culture, traditions, art, music, food, and local cultural events. The program is open to children in grades 1 through 8.
Stone Soup Fresno serves all families, regardless of ethnicity. Anyone is welcome to visit.
Francine M. Farber is co-president of the Fresno County League of Women Voters and a longtime advocate of greater access to quality early education.
