Indiana’s On-My-Way Pre-K program is expanding this fall to enroll more than 200 Lake County 4-year-olds in high-quality preschool programs.
Kim Olesker, regional director of the United Way of Northwest Indiana, said 221 of the 237 students who received scholarships have shown up at the preschools where they are enrolled.
“Sometimes the parents change their minds, people move and one center in Merrillville closed, so we had to redistribute about 21 scholarships,” Olesker said. “The process is very fluid.”
Last fall, the state chose Lake County and four other counties to serve as pilots for the On My Way Pre-K program, which gives low-income parents of 4-year-olds up to $6,800 to finance preschool at a program rated Level 3 or 4 in the state’s Paths to Quality program.
Merrillville resident Alissa Govert’s son Tatum was part of the first class at My School Child Care and Learning Center in Crown Point, which she chose because it was the closest high-quality program to her house.
“I was pretty nervous at first, saying ‘I hope he likes it’,” Govert said. “But once I started hearing about the daily and weekly agendas they had for the kids, they were doing so much more (than his previous program), and the interaction with all of kids. He started going on field trips.
“We absolutely loved the facility and the teachers.”
Govert heard about the program from a family member during the previous fall. She said the four-page application was easy to fill out and submit, and soon afterward, she got a letter informing her that Tatum had earned a spot.
“I did tell quite a few people, so I hope they make it available for more kids,” Govert said.
Lake County’s first On My Way Pre-K class enrolled in January, with about 67 students, but local early childhood education advocates aimed to triple that enrollment with the fall class. Olesker said the number of qualified providers in Lake County has also increased — from 35 to 47.
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“The other four counties are having severe capacity issues, but it’s a bonus for us that our centers are able to serve the number of students,” Olesker said.
There is significant demand locally for the program. More than 577 families applied for spots in the fall lottery, but the number of scholarship spots is limited upon counties providing 10 percent in local matching funds.
That’s where Geminus comes in. The county’s provider of Head Start and Early Head Start and distributor of Child Care Development Fund vouchers has connected with some families that didn’t received a scholarship with other early childhood education opportunities.
A new federal grant — the Early Head Start Partnership — should expand quality early education opportunities to kids in northern Lake County as well.
Geminus president Sandy Kauffman said the Early Head Start grant will help centers in Hammond, Gary and East Chicago get training and materials to reach even more students.
“We’ll work with select childcare providers to help them meet early learning standards to create a more robust, comprehensive service that will eventually match the reach of our Early Head Start program,” Kauffman said.
He said that Lake County has a variety of childcare options, but they’re not evenly distributed across the county; Parents need to take transportation, jobs and other needs into account when deciding on the best option for their children, Kauffman said.
Currently, more than 1,500 kids in Lake and Porter counties are enrolled in Early Head Start and Head Start programs.
“What we’ve got here is kind of a quilt, but it has holes in it,” Kauffman said. “I guess you could call it a safety net.”
The Indiana General Assembly did allocate funds for a third class of On-My-Way Pre-K students, but students won’t register until next spring for the school year that starts in August 2016, Olesker said.
Prior to the On My Way Pre-K program’s establishment in 2014, Indiana was one of 10 states that didn’t invest in early childhood education. But Kauffman said research on the effectiveness of early childhood education has been around for years.
“Early childhood learning is very important,” Kauffman said.