A state-funded prekindergarten pilot program is playing an important role in widening accessibility for low-income children, according to advocates.
Deborah Sura, site manager of the Head Start program at Edgar L. Miller Elementary School in Merrillville, said about 13 of the program’s 94 students are attending because of the program.
“When they go into kindergarten, they can hit the ground running,” she said. “A lot of these families wouldn’t be able to afford private preschool. It’s expensive.”
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The benefit of such a program is to begin to close a well-documented academic gap between lower-income children and middle- or upper-class peers, she said. Most children coming through the program learn basic literacy, mathematics and socialization skills.
Through state funding, the Head Start class was able to expand to six hours from 3 1/2 per day.
Two years ago, 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 pay for preschool at a program rated Level 3 or 4 in the state’s Paths to Quality program.
The program is funded through at least the next year, Sura said, and demand still remains high. Applicants are typically selected via lottery.
Last month, the GOP-controlled state Senate voted to sharply curtail Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s request to increase funding for the state’s five-county pilot program by $10 million and instead offered a $3 million boost, according to The Associated Press.
At the same time, they moved forward on their own $1 million plan to offer a new — and cheaper — online preschool program designed by a Utah-based company, which boasts on its website that it “only takes 15 minutes a day.”
Indiana lags behind most other states when it comes to preparing disadvantaged children for school, a bipartisan coalition of education advocates say. More than 40 other states offer significant preschool programs, but Indiana is not one, according to 2015 figures from the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.
Instead, the five-county pilot program was created at the behest of former Gov. Mike Pence, now the vice president, though advocates say demand far outstrips available funding.
The Associated Press contributed.
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