Hilltop Early Learning Center Celebrates Successful Inaugural Year

Published on October 30, 2024

The Hilltop Early Learning Center is celebrating its successful inaugural year of operation, providing high-quality, affordable pre-kindergarten education to underserved children in the Hilltop, which research shows to be essential to long-term academic achievement and upward mobility.

The center, which opened to students in fall 2023, is operated by Columbus Early Learning Centers and represents a $24 million investment by the city to offer a range of holistic services to children and families in the area, including a full-service health center operated by Nationwide Children’s Hospital, counseling, a food pantry and more.

“When we started this work, there were 2,000 four-year-olds living in the Hilltop, and only 152 of them were enrolled in high-quality pre-school. That was unacceptable,” said City of Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther. “We enlisted a broad community coalition to turn those numbers around and deploy a comprehensive approach to improving learning outcomes and opening new doors to opportunity that will better ensure a lifetime of success for these children and all who pass through this center.”

During the 2023-24 school year, the Hilltop Early Learning Center served approximately 120 children from the Hilltop – and the center is on track to reach its full capacity of 240 children this academic year. All children at the center are automatically enrolled in Early Start Columbus (ESC), which enables them to attend the center free of charge.

ESC-affiliated learning institutions have also earned prominent recognition for exceptional student performance. According to a study by The Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy at The Ohio State University, ESC students perform, on average, 10 percentage points higher in the highest tier of academic assessment than their peers in Franklin County and the state of Ohio. At the same time, only 18% of ESC students score within the lowest tier – compared to 32 percent of kindergarteners in Franklin County and 30 percent across the state.