Pre-Kindergarten Program

To complete your online registration, choose the option that best describes your family's current status with our school system and follow the directions:

Register: This is my first child in the system

Register: I have other children in the system

Key things to remember:

• Within 48 hours of your completion of the online registration, you will receive a status update which will inform you of any documents we did not yet receive that are required in order for your child’s name to be included in the lottery drawing.
• Should you require assistance to complete your child’s application, please contact your child’s school for an appointment to come in and use a registration  kiosk at the school.
• If you have access to a scanner or the ability to take a readable photo of the required documents, you can upload your required documents as part of the online registration process.  If you prefer not to do this, simply bring your documents to the school. No appointment is required for document drop-off.

Gather Required Documents

Your child's Pre-K registration application is not complete until these required documents have been uploaded correctly. Only complete applications that are received by the deadline are eligible for the lottery drawing.

• Child’s birth certificate 
• Child’s social security card
• Parent's or guardian's picture identification 
• Proof of residency 
• Georgia Certificate of Immunization and Certificate of Ear, Eye, Dental, and Nutritional Screen (if complete; may be submitted later)

Visit our Required Documents for Registration page to further assist you with this step.

In March of each year, a Pre-Kindergarten Lottery is held for each school zone where there are more registered students than available class spaces.  A lottery is defined as a process or outcome which is governed by chance; therefore, parents do not choose which Pre-K site their child will attend in that zone.

After each lottery, the school district will contact the parents of each student chosen during the lottery, so that the registering parent can formally accept the enrollment. This must be done to officially enroll the child. 

Why are Lottery Drawings & Waitlists Necessary?

• The Georgia Department of Early Learning (also known as Bright from the Start) administers Georgia Pre-K, which is an optional early learning program.
• Unlike grades K to 12 for which the school district must accommodate all children in Bulloch County who are registered for school,  the Georgia Department of Early Learning decides and approves how many program sites our school system may host. This limits the number of children we can register, but we do provide lists of other private Pre-K sites in the community and a waitlist for our sites.
• Bulloch County Schools has 11 pre-k sites with a total of 20 classrooms with space for 398 children. For this reason, demand may exceed space, so it is important to register during the announced Pre-Kindergarten Registration period.
• Even if you feel a Pre-K site will fill up, please complete a registration packet, and if necessary, ask to be placed on the waitlist. Waitlists help us show demand for the program and could lead to additional sites being granted to the school system.

May a child remain on an out-of-zone waiting list after they have accepted a spot at his or her attendance-zoned school? 

Yes, the child may remain on the out-of-zone list prior to the first day of faculty pre-planning. After pre-planning begins, to keep your child on an out-of-zone waitlist, you will need to first decline the in-zone pre-kindergarten spot.

What if I register after the Pre-K lottery drawing?

Children who are registered after the Pre-K Lottery drawing will be automatically placed on both the in-zone waitlist for their zoned school and the district's out-of-zone waitlist.

Pre-Kindergarten Waitlists

A Pre-K waitlist is defined as a list of children, who are awaiting possible placement in a Pre-K site. Children are placed on a waitlist if they did not receive placement at a Pre-K site during the lottery drawing held each spring.The school district has two waitlists:

• In-Zone School Waitlist: Each school has an in-zone waitlist. For school zones where there is more than one Pre-K site (i.e. an elementary site and a high school site), the two sites share a single waitlist. The order of your placement on this list is based on the lottery.
• Out-of-Zone Waitlist: This is a waitlist to attend one of our other Pre-K sites besides your zoned school. When you complete your Pre-K application it is stamped with the date and time it is received. If a child is placed on the school district's out-of-zone waitlist, your rank on this list is determined by the time stamp on your application.

If a child receives placement in a Pre-K site, the parent can either accept or deny the placement. In an instance where there are two Pre-K sites in a zone (an elementary and a high school site) and a family participated in a Pre-K Lottery, the child received placement at a Pre-K site, and the parent denied placement at that site, the child will not be placed on a waitlist at the other Pre-K site within that same zone because the sites share a single waitlist.