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TPS,
Private Concern to Split Head Start Funding
By Kevin Milliken
Sojourner’s Truth Reporter
Toledo Public Schools (TPS) and Pittsburgh-based Brightside
Academy will split some $13 million in federal Head Start
funding to serve an estimated 1,600 children across Lucas
County with a preschool program and a new-to-Toledo
initiative called Early Head Start, which focuses on
children between birth and three years of age.
The TPS share of the five-year grant will be $8.1 million.
TPS partnered with the Lucas County Family Council, which
will assist with Early Head Start, and WSOS, a community
action agency that has run Head Start in four northwest Ohio
counties since the federal preschool program’s inception in
1965.
The TPS portion of the grant will
to serve 1,126 children. Brightside Academy will receive
just under $5 million to serve an additional 455 children.
The aim is to better prepare TPS students and other children
for kindergarten. The revised program will begin in August.
“The best intervention is prevention-- by getting involved
with our students at an early age,” said Romules Durant,
Ed.D, TPS superintendent.
“We needed to stem the tide of a lack of preparedness that
some students, because of their economic situation, just
didn’t have the access to the preschool advantages of some
of their peers in other parts of the community have,” said
Cecelia Adams, Ph.D,TPS board president.
Durant indicated school district officials would meet with
Brightside Academy representatives in mid-June to determine
which entity would serve which zip codes in the county.
Durant stated TPS invited Brightside to join its proposal
for competitive funding, but the privately-owned education
company declined.
Head Start programs won’t be located just at TPS schools or
central-city facilities. WSOS will provide other school
districts will have at least one site for income-eligible
preschoolers, including Washington Local, Maumee and
Springfield.
The Family Council will work with infants, toddlers, and
pregnant mothers. TPS will locate Head Start sites at the
Summit Street YMCA, existing TPS preschools, and several
elementary schools, such as McTigue. Another 200 students
will attend private child-care providers that qualified by
having at least three
stars in the Step Up to Quality state ranking system.
The collaborative Head Start model will offer “wraparound”
services, including healthy meals and medical care for Lucas
County’s children, as well as education for parents so they
can take steps towards self-sufficiency.
The federal
Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) put in a
competitive bidding process for Head Start in 2011, which
placed former provider Economic Opportunity Planning
Association (EOPA) against TPS. However, neither group’s
proposal was selected.
Instead, HHS
selected Denver-based Community Development Institute (CDI)
to run Head Start during a second round of bidding. CDI
plans to lay off most of its 280 employees by the end of
July. TPS, WSOS, and Family Council officials plan to hire
about 110 people over the summer.
“We’ve been trying to get the Head Start grant since 2011
and politics got in the way,” said TPS board member Lisa
Sobecki.
Preschool teachers to be hired will be required to have at
least a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education and
assistant teachers must have at least an associate’s degree
in early childhood education.
“We do that because we believe the children who qualify or
Head Start are the most at-risk and, statistically, have the
most to lose,” said Amy Allen, Ph.D, a UT professor who will
head TPS preschool and special education programs. “They
need and deserve the best we have to offer and that is what
we intend to give them.”
The TPS-based collaborative will be part of an HHS pilot
project, which expands Head Start from birth to five years.
The program will serve children longer, but fewer will be
accepted into the program. TPS board members lamented that
7,000 kids are eligible for Head Start programming in Lucas
County, but the majority won’t be served.
“We’re going to have to pick and choose, through eligibility
requirements, as to who gets to take advantage of this
opportunity,” said Bob Vasquez, TPS board member. “It’s
bothersome to me there are so many children not able to be
afforded this opportunity.”
Durant indicated meetings already are set up in search of
more community-based funding to serve more children. Some
TPS board members also raised concerns over whether the
district’s general fund would have to be tapped in order to
provide Head Start services. The superintendent admitted
that could be a possibility at a future date.
“We have a collective problem that is going to take a
collective solution and a collective effort of multiple
agencies to come to this solution and have a collective
impact,” he said.
“We should be
looking toward universal pre-K across the county,” said TPS
board
member Polly Taylor-Gerken.
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