INDIANAPOLIS — A state senator from Logansport is one of several Indiana legislators proposing a bill to expand the state’s early education pilot program to 10 counties.
Sen. Randy Head, R-Logansport, helped author bipartisan Senate Bill 276, which calls for an expansion of Indiana’s pre-kindergarten pilot program for five more counties.
The Indiana General Assembly in 2014 approved a five-county pilot program. The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration then chose Allen, Jackson, Lake, Marion and Vanderburgh counties to house approved On My Way Pre-K programs in public or private schools, licensed childcare centers, licensed homes or registered ministries, according to the FSSA website.
The program awards grants to eligible low-income families with 4-year-olds in those counties. There are 264 results of approved programs on the FSSA website’s pre-K search engine.
Head said the bill’s purpose is to fund “quality pre-K” that gets students ready to read and work at a kindergarten level. The bill states it would establish a pre-kindergarten pilot program fund and appropriate $20 million to it from the state’s general fund in fiscal year 2017 and 2018.
“If kids are not being read to at home, but their parents want to get them into a program, we need to do that,” Head said. “We spend an awful lot of time and money remediating these kids when they get to school if they haven’t had the proper instruction at home or a good quality pre-K program to attend.”
Logansport Community School Corp. Superintendent Michele Starkey said kindergarten is more rigorous than it used to be, as students are expected to read sooner and know more than in the past. There are, however, many students who enter school not knowing letters or sounds, she said.
For the past four or so years, Logansport schools have had Basic Kindergarten classes for 4-year-olds living in the corporation. The district services 80-plus students a year in two morning classes and two afternoon classes housed at Fairview and Landis elementary schools.
The classes prepare students for kindergarten readiness standards handed down by the state, Starkey said, focusing on literacy skills and school routines students will encounter in kindergarten and throughout their schooling.
Even though Logansport didn’t receive any additional funding from the state for preschool classes, Starkey said they decided to take the initiative to help the many kids in the community who didn’t have an opportunity to go to preschool or enroll in Area V’s Head Start program.
“We’re trying to build a really strong foundation to continue to build on,” Starkey said, “and so the stronger that the base is, the better off that student will be long term.”
Head said he worries about students who fall behind at the start of their time in school, such as first graders who don’t attend kindergarten or preschool, since the state doesn’t mandate either grade, and aren’t able to catch up come third grade testing for iREAD.
“And then we’ve created a negative educational experience for them, and that carries over going forward,” Head said if those students continue to fall behind.
Starkey said that it’s up to school corporations to assess if their students need more opportunities for early education if they aren’t receiving the funding from the state. And she hopes that preschool funding won’t take away from other monies used for the state’s public education.
“Starting preschool is not a quick fix to get more students to graduate from high school. It’s more of a long-term fix,” Starkey said. “You have to be honest ... within your district on what is exactly the priority and move to make that happen. When you do those kind of things, you find ways ... to make things happen, and that’s what we’ve done and what we’ve had to do.”