By LAURA HAMMACK, guest columnist

Brown County Schools was recently awarded an early education capacity building grant from the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration. With many thanks to our Director of Student Learning, Debbie Harman, for writing the successful grant application, our school district is now able to use $90,349 in grant resources to serve more children in our preschool programming and increase the quality of programming we provide.

Preschool education is not required in Indiana, and the state does not provide universal funding to school districts to offer this programming. In fact, a recent project compared the quality and accessibility of preschool for all of the states in our nation including the District of Columbia. The student used 12 different metrics to rank the states from worst to first. We were disheartened, however not surprised, to learn that Indiana scored in the 51st position.

Dead last.

This sobering data point must be a rally cry for our state to reconsider their position toward universal preschool for all.

In Brown County, our community decided that last place isn’t acceptable when providing preschool services for families in need. With extraordinary support from the Brown County Community Foundation for the past four years, students have received a total of nearly $200,000 in scholarship funding to attend one of the preschool programs offered in our three elementary schools. Community support like this is truly unique and the impact has been significant.

The resources realized from the capacity-building grant are allocated not only to increase the number of students served in the preschool program, but to also advance the program from the current Paths to Quality Level 3 to a Paths to Quality Level 4. Level 4 is the highest and most rigorous certification level. By engaging in a comprehensive curriculum deployment and professional development model for our educators, we expect to offer the highest quality program to our children and their families.

Because preschool programs are now certified at Paths to Quality Level 3, we can accept Child Care Development Fund vouchers and On My Way Pre-K funding where local community scholarship dollars may have been previously used.

However, it is extremely important to understand that there are barriers to accessing these dollars. A family is only eligible for these resources if income eligibility is met and the parent is enrolled in post-secondary education or maintains a job.

We are deeply grateful to the Brown County Community Foundation for continuing to support children when these other programs declare a family ineligible.

Being a small and rural school district, we embrace the delivery of preschool services as a fundamental responsibility to our community. We are continually looking for ways to expand our program and appreciate the work of the Brown County Birth to Five Steering Committee to assist us in realizing that goal.

While we are currently serving the needs of 3- and 4-year-olds, we have been studying ways to provide care to infants and toddlers by benchmarking other school communities who are deploying these models. Through comprehensive networks of support, we believe a positive impact on our quality of place will be realized with expansion of these services to our families in need.

Brown County has proven time and again that last place doesn’t align with our ideology and complacency isn’t in our vocabulary. Our community can singlehandedly move the needle on preschool services from worst place to first place. Through securing grant funding like was recently awarded that advances the highest quality opportunities in early education, we are making a difference.

We must continue this good, hard and important work because our future generations are depending on us.

Laura Hammack is superintendent of Brown County schools. She can be reached at 812-988-6601 or [email protected].