The Lincoln County School District #2 is asking parents to complete the Early Childhood Census which is to help it plan for the future needs of the district.

Its Early Childhood Coordinator, Emily Isaacson, says this is for children younger than five and not in kindergarten. She says it will help in many aspects.

“So we can look ahead several years and see what numbers are going to look like,” Isaacson said. “See if we’re going to need more teachers, if we’re going to need more classrooms, more school space.”

She says the contact information gathered is also sent to the elementary school secretaries to have on hand for next year’s incoming kindergarten students. She also says they are asking parents to fill out the census online as much as possible. You can get there by clicking here or by going to the district’s website.

“We also have some fillable forms that are out,” Isaacson said. “We have some flyers that are out with QR codes on them. We’ll be sending out…a postcard that has the QR code as well on that and parents can access the online census that way.”

She says the district does have workers as well that will try to contact parents too.

“Because of COVID this year we’re hoping that most people will do this on their own online,” Isaacson said. “So that we can limit that face-to-face contact.”

She says parents will have until January 25th to fill out the census and it takes 5-10 minutes to complete as it only asks for “basic information”. Isaacson also says even if you filled it out last year to do it again because much of people’s information changes year-to-year so the district wants the latest information.