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A small preschool classroom lines the wall of the childhood-education room in Jessamine Career and Technology Center. Small, colorful chairs surround three short, round tables while preschool play equipment and materials sit underneath the windows that look out on the intersection of U.S. 27 and Ky. 169.

Those chairs have been empty almost every day since they took up residence in the classroom. This spring, JCTC teacher Jennifer Hulette hopes to fill them with young children while giving Jessamine County high school students a new opportunity in child-development education.

Hulette is piloting a “Mom’s Day Out” program in which students in her morning classes will take care of 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds for six hours a week while teaching them lessons based on state curriculum standards.

She hopes to begin the program Feb. 19 and run it for six weeks. Children would be at JCTC from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

The preschool lab in the classroom has been used in teaching concepts of early childhood education, but Hulette said she is eager to see her students get hands-on experience.

“I’m just really excited that we’re finally getting something going to utilize this space,” she said. “I’ve been utilizing the space all along in terms of my regular teaching, trying to incorporate it in helping the kids learn, but actually getting to have kids in here first-hand is going to be a much more real-life experience for them.”

The Jessamine County Board of Education has been addressing concerns about the program in anticipation of its inception. Hulette informed the board that no food would be served, adequate medical information would be gathered and she would be present at all times.

Since the children would be in a lab setting for only six hours a week, the program would not be subject to the state’s licensing requirements for daycares, which apply when children are present for 10 or more hours a week.

“I was very honest with her that I wasn’t really interested in us having a time for our students to come in and take care of children,” Deputy Superintendent Owens Saylor told the board Jan. 22. “I want there to be a real learning process, an assessment of their progress, some real goals and then ways for them to even connect it to future activities. It’s not just a babysitting class; it has to be more than that.”

Hulette has divided her two morning classes — child development services II and advanced child and human development — into smaller groups of three or four to plan lessons, which could involve play equipment but would revolve around the state’s curriculum standards.

“They’re going to be learning while they’re playing and not realizing it,” Hulette said.

The program will be able to accommodate only 12 children this year; Hulette is currently recruiting the children through the parents of students in her classes. She said she hoped it would be a valuable experience for the children as well as her students.

“I think one of the biggest benefits is the social aspect, because a lot of these parents are stay-at-home moms, and their kids don’t get out of the house that much in terms of social interaction,” she said. “It’d be kind of neat for parents if they need to run some errands and maybe do some grocery shopping or get some of those kinds of things done — and it’s free, so it would kind of give them a little bit of a break.”

Although the preschool lab is already sufficient for the program, Hulette is still trying to add to it. Her students worked in teams on a project to design a new activity-center idea for the lab and give a marketing presentation. The winner was a music activity center with a large piano mat that will be in the classroom by the time the program starts in February.

“They had all these criteria they had to meet in terms of how this was going to help kids emotionally, socially, physically and intellectually,” Hulette said. “They had to research why their center was the best idea, and they had to try to sell it ... every year, I’m going to do this same project so that we’re adding to the lab every year.”

While Hulette didn’t rule out the possibility that the program could continue, she said the arrival of the new Jessamine Early Learning Village next door to JCTC next year would open up new avenues for the high schoolers to work with younger children.

“It will be a little bit easier when the Early Learning Village comes in,” she said. “I’ll be able to do a lot of collaboration, and I’m excited about that, but right now, with it being in Wilmore, we just don’t have the travel time to get them over here, so it will give them that first-hand experience right here, in house.”

Hulette’s students will get to move up the food chain when they come back from spring break and the program is over; they’ll start going out to elementary schools for field experiences, and the colorful chairs in childhood-education classroom will be empty again — at least until next year.

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