Montgomery County school officials announced a pilot program Tuesday that will make full-day Head Start preschool available to 260 area low-income students during the 2007-08 school year. The county received a $715,000 federal grant to test the full-day Head Start option at 10 schools that receive Title I funding for serving economically disadvantaged areas.
Half-day sessions will remain available for approximately 310 4-year-olds and 45 3-year-olds. Claudia Simmons, supervisor of Montgomery County pre-kindergarten and Head Start programs, said eligibility is determined by the federal poverty guidelines.
“A family of four must make about $20,000 a year or less in order to participate in the program,” Simmons said. “As you can imagine, that doesn’t go very far in Montgomery County.”
Simmons said research has shown “time and intensity of instruction” make a difference in teaching young children.
“What we’ve seen with full-day kindergarten is a good deal of progress, and we know our preschool children could make similar progress if given the same amount of instruction,” Simmons said.
County Council Education Committee Chair Mike Knapp said parents will benefit more from the full-day program than the half-day sessions, too.
“With the two- and three-hour classes, we don’t always get the level of participation from the parents that we want,” Knapp said. “They can’t get there to drop them off and pick them up when they’re working a job.”
Knapp said that in some recent years, the half-day Head Start programs have not always been filled to capacity because “it didn’t fit families’ lives.”
“They just couldn’t coordinate the day care around the schedule,” Knapp said. “It’s great to reach as many kids as possible. Head Start is not just an educational program, there’s a variety of other services covered in the program, too. We handle health care, nutrition and educational issues at the same time.”
