Bethel pre-K: How a closed school is now serving more than 140 preschoolers

Preschool drop-off at Bethel’s Clear Lake Community Center on Sept. 22 was a carefully choreographed production.

Between two schoolyard entrances placed opposite each other for smooth traffic flow, Bethel Preschool Promise staff welcomed 75 children ages 3-5 in 30 minutes. They played upbeat music, blew bubbles and greeted students with big embraces to ease them into the day. 

“There’s a little bit less separation anxiety if they’re coming into the outside play,” said Luke Mortinson, Bethel Preschool Promise co-director and director of the Early Education Program. “It’s also convenient because then if parents are feeling a little bit uneasy or concerned, they can hang nearby.”

After the goodbyes, the preschoolers started their morning work inside. Jayden, 3, clutched a photo of his family as he traced numbers. He pointed at each family member, naming them, and kept the picture in his hand while he ate his bagel and orange-slice breakfast.

It was only the second week of school, and everyone was still adjusting, including the 70-some-odd other children in the building who attend other preschool programs.

Clear Lake is now a preschool hub. After Bethel School District closed Clear Lake Elementary School in 2025, the district rented it out to a hodgepodge of non-profits and childcare providers. Shasta Middle School’s closure gave organizations including the Boys and Girls Club room to expand, while the preschools took over the cleared-out space at Clear Lake. 

The building’s latest evolution serves more than 140 kids across three separate programs, with capacity for more than 230 children. Included in the mix is state-funded Preschool Promise, a free preschool program for families at or below 200% of the federal poverty level ($66,000 for a family of four); Early Childhood CARES, a free special education preschool for qualifying children; and Ascensions Child Development Center, a private preschool, childcare and afterschool provider for children 6 weeks to 6 years.

The makeshift preschool consortium is the beginning of Bethel Superintendent Kraig Sproles’ dream of universal prekindergarten for the district.

One giant preschool

Clear Lake’s sudden explosion of preschool classrooms is partly due to consolidation and partly due to expansion. 

Four Preschool Promise classrooms previously at other Bethel schools moved to Clear Lake last year. This year, four special education preschool classrooms, some of which were in 4J, moved to Clear Lake.

A bright spot, however, are the 11 additional Preschool Promise slots Bethel received in the state’s slot reallocation this year. Those came from other counties that were not using them. Bethel received more than a third of the slots Lane County received, partly because it had space to expand, Sproles said, and partly due to demand. 

“Bethel consistently maintained one of the longest waitlists in Lane County throughout the 2025-26 school year,” said Kris Coomes, director of education at United Way of Lane County.

With an additional classroom, Bethel Preschool Promise was able to promote former assistant Alex Balverde to a head teacher role. Balverde is bilingual in Spanish and English and teaches at Lane Education Service District’s Migrant Education summer program for children of migrant workers.

“I have a few (students) in my classroom right now that I had over the summer, so that’s really cool,” she said.

Mortinson oversees both Preschool Promise and the special education preschool classrooms. He said having so much of his staff in one place makes things easier and having a large amount of kids in one place, while more chaotic, is more joyful. The shared spaces in Clear Lake also make extracurriculars possible, like free dance classes and parenting courses.

“We’ve been able to pool our resources because we have everyone here,” said Megan Mortinson, Bethel Preschool Promise co-director and Luke Mortinson’s wife. “It makes it so accessible for families. They’re all here anyway, picking up their kiddos, and then they can access those resources.”

In addition to the 11 new Preschool Promise slots, there will be up to 90 new private preschool and childcare slots in Bethel for children through Ascensions. BethAny Freimuth, owner and director of Ascensions Child Development Center, is excited to serve kids in the community she grew up in. She started her career as an in-home childcare provider 19 years ago in Eugene, later opening a childcare center in Junction City. Her second location at Clear Lake is a homecoming.

“It’s so crazy to be providing childcare for friends,” Freimuth said. “My best friend in 6th grade is a single dad and his kid is in my program.”

In addition to operating a full-day preschool and childcare for babies and toddlers, Ascensions is open 6 a.m.-6 p.m., providing before and after preschool care for working families. This will complement Preschool Promise, Early Childhood CARES and the Head Start location next to Clear Lake, Freimuth said. Her childcare business fills these gaps nicely in Junction City, and she hopes to do the same in Bethel. 

Ascensions is a qualified Employment Related Day Care program provider (meaning low-income families can get subsidized daycare tuition for her program through the state), and also offers discounts to military families and tribal members.

Freimuth currently has two classrooms she’s still filling, but could expand to four, making her total capacity 90 children.

A dream of universal pre-K for Bethel

Since he came to Bethel in 2021, Sproles wanted to make universal pre-K possible in his district. Universal pre-K is a model in which every child, regardless of family income or disability status, attends preschool for one or two years before entering kindergarten.

According to a report published by Oregon State University, only 37% of 3-5-year-olds in Lane County had access to licensed, regulated childcare in 2024. The percentage, while low, was four percentage points higher than 2022’s percentage and puts Lane County above the “childcare desert” threshold for 3-5 year-olds, which is 33%.

Sproles’ vision echoes Gov. Tina Kotek’s statewide desire for universal pre-K. The logistics of state-run universal pre-K can be complicated, and research shows results vary based program. But studies in multiple states, including a recent study in New Mexico, show it to be effective at improving children’ s K-12 academic outcomes.

Sproles’ goal is for Bethel to have enough free preschool slots for all children in the district who qualify through state and federally funded programs to attend preschool. And he wants enough private preschool slots for every other child. 

With the exception of some early literacy dollars, K-12 schools in Oregon are not funded to run or support preschools. Nonetheless, Sproles aims to leverage Bethel’s resources to support more preschool access, including empty school buildings left behind by enrollment decline.

“This is our way of giving back to the community and our way of using these community buildings, that were built with taxpayer dollars, to really build a better Bethel, a more resilient Bethel,” Sproles said.

Monthly rent is affordable for tenants, running $555-750 per classroom.

The district knows the high costs of running a childcare facility. Due to budget cuts last year, Bethel closed its Little Wolverines preschool and childcare program at Willamette High School, which served staff, community members and high school students with children. About 30 children aged 0-5 attended the program.

Sproles said because the district compensated childcare staff members similarly to Bethel’s K-12 staff, costs to run the center outpaced tuition rates the district deemed fair, leading to district-subsidized tuition. Sproles estimated they would have spent $160,000 this year on Little Wolverines. Instead, the district shuttered the program. Willamette still provides childcare for the handful of students who need it.

Beyond supporting preschool as a public good at Clear Lake, Sproles hopes the investment benefits the district. Bethel provides its preschool partners at Clear Lake early literacy coaching, hoping it will improve children academically when they reach kindergarten. 

And Sproles hopes that by ensuring preschool options are available within the Bethel neighborhood, families stay in the area for their children’s K-12 schooling. Districts statewide are vying for a competitive edge as public school enrollment continues to drop.

A need for long-term support

Financial challenges remain for Bethel’s community-focused vision of supporting pre-K.

When Bethel closed Clear Lake Elementary and immediately repurposed it as Clear Lake Community Center in 2025, a $4 million federal grant that would have helped the district upgrade the aging building never materialized because the project used language flagged by the Trump administration.

Since then, the school district has applied for other funding to fix up the building, but hasn’t been successful. Sproles hopes, with time, the City of Eugene and Lane County will assist the district with the maintaining the building for preschool and afterschool care, which he sees as a grassroots effort to not only support their students, but also create a better community.

“When we do surveys and we hear from people…they want a community that’s more knit together,” Sproles said. I really think we can serve that need and we can accelerate student outcomes. I think those two things go hand in hand.”