The Finance Committee of the Shelbyville Common Council is due to consider providing $50,000 in funding for Early Learning Shelby County.
On Monday morning, Allison Coburn, program director, and Kathy Zerr, executive director, of ELSC, appeared at the council’s meeting in City Hall, 44 W. Washington St., to make the funding request.
ELSC had sent the council a proposed budget, but Coburn noted that the organization did not get a state education grant the staff had applied for that was included in it.
“So the budget you have in front of you is an amended budget,” she told the council.
In the budget Coburn was referring to, the grant amount requested from the state was $98,608.
Councilman Rob Nolley (R-3rd Ward) noted that basically she was asking for half that amount from the city and half from the county, and Coburn replied yes.
As president of the City Council, Nolley was chairing the meeting in the absence of Mayor Tom DeBaun, who normally acts as chairman.
Nolley proposed sending the funding request to the council’s Finance Committee.
Councilman David Carmony (R-2nd Ward), who is chairman of the Finance Committee, said the city’s had a long-standing problem of lagging behind in education so funding would need to be long-term, and it can’t just come from government.
“This is a community problem,” he said, affecting many aspects of life. “I just would like to see that this is shared ... not just dumped on the city and the county.”
Coburn said she lives in Marion County and there’s a fee tagged onto her sewage bill to help pay for a similar program there.
She hopes to see private investment in an early learning program here as time goes on.
Councilman Brad Ridgeway (R-4th Ward) suggested that Early Learning Shelby County approach the community’s state legislators for financial support.
The council members voted 7-0 to send ELSC’s funding request to the Finance Committee which is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. on June 26 in City Hall, 44 W. Washington St.
Zerr, the ELSC executive director and retired elementary school teacher in Shelbyville, said after the meeting that the group would not be duplicating work by the preschool that Shelbyville Central Schools plans to open in the former Marsh Supermarket building next year.
“We’re concentrating on 0 to 3 years old,” she said.
A group of local childcare providers recently graduated from Blue River Career Programs, part of the initiative of ELSC to improve the qualifications of those providers.