RACINE - Four baby ducklings huddled together in a cardboard box in Mary Siuta's classroom at Jerstad-Agerholm Elementary School.

They scurried to the middle of the box whenever Siuta's students gathered around to sneak a peak, eager to hold the newly hatched ducklings.

Siuta's classroom is one of two 4-year-old kindergarten classrooms at Jerstad-Agerholm. The school also offers a special education program for 4-year-old students.

The Racine Unified School District is nearing completion of its second year offering universal 4K. Unified is one of about 280 districts in Wisconsin currently offering 4K. Twelve Unified schools offer 4K programs, including the Racine Early Education Center, which opened last year.

"All kids can benefit from coming to school early. Some kids can benefit more," Siuta said. "We're really fostering development. You can't really speed up the process. You can broaden it and enrich it."

After working on a classroom project about the life cycle of a duck, the students in Siuta's class gathered in a circle on the floor.

They had a chance to watch the real thing waddle on the floor, eat, drink and then expel what it ate and drank.

Waddling, eating and drinking didn't elicit the same kind of laughter from the children as the expelling, but Siuta assured them this was just part of life. Animals don't go to the bathroom the way humans do, Siuta reminded the class.

This is life in a 4K classroom. The 4-year-olds are curious about everything, Siuta said and that curiosity demands a lot of energy from teachers of young children.

Siuta, a longtime Racine Unified teacher, has been teaching 4K since the late 1980s when the district started a program that offered 4K in a few select schools.

States like Wisconsin continue to push to expand what school districts can offer in terms of early childhood programs. The number of Wisconsin school districts offering 4-year-old kindergarten has grown steadily during the past 13 years.

In her classroom, in addition to working on social skills and language skills, Siuta and her part-time assistant, Gina Wisialowski, work on school behaviors that will prepare their students for the years of school ahead of them.

In addition to the district schools that offer 4K, Unified contracts with eight off-site schools that offer the program, said Chuck Leonard, Unified's all-day kindergarten and early childhood supervisor.

Unified enrolled more than 800 students during the first year the district offered 4K. The district enrolled more than 900 students this year, Leonard said.

The district is still counting the number of students who have enrolled for the upcoming school year. Twenty-six Wisconsin districts added 4K for 2007-08. Unified offers a half-day 4K program, with morning and afternoon classes, in addition to the full-day 5-year-old kindergarten program.

In Wisconsin, 283 school districts offered 4K during in 2007-08, up from 85 in 1997-98.

State-funded prekindergarten programs currently serve only 22 percent of 4-year-olds and 3 percent of 3-year-olds in the U.S., according to Pre-K Now, an organization that advances voluntary prekindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds.

Wisconsin is one of 12 states to include 4K funding in the state's public school funding formula, according to Pre-K Now.

The organization promotes the benefits of high-quality prekindergarten to children, their families and their communities - from improved academic outcomes to the economic savings to schools and states.

Unified doesn't do any formal testing to determine whether the program is successful in preparing students for kindergarten, Leonard said.

"All we have is what kindergarten teachers are telling us at this point," Leonard said.

They're telling Leonard that students are coming to kindergarten better prepared, with more social skills, ready to listen and ready for more academic work.

Want to Enroll Your Child?

Racine Unified offers a 4-year-old half-day kindergarten and a 5-year-old full-day kindergarten.

If your child will be 4 or 5 on or before Sept. 1, you can register them for kindergarten.

Registration for the school year beginning in September begins on the first Wednesday in March.

Please register your child at the school they will attend in the next school year. You will need to bring your child's birth certificate or baptismal record, proof of address and an immunization record to register.

If you are uncertain about which school or have questions, call (262) 631-7194 or (262) 631-7063.