Beginning this school year, qualifying families will have a grant option to send their child to preschool full-time in Brown County for free.
Parents must apply for the On My Way Pre-K grant dollars either online or by filling out a paper form. Brown County Schools and the Career Resource Center of Brown County are available help with the application process.
On My Way Pre-K grants are awarded to 4-year-olds from low-income families, and families can use them at any approved program. In Brown County, those providers are Brown County Schools and Lori’s Ton O Fun Daycare.
During the last legislative session, a bill was passed that allowed the grant dollars to be used at any high-quality preschool provider regardless of county. Previously, the program was only in certain counties.
Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, introduced the bill to expand the program, saying that more than $15 million dedicated to On My Way Pre-K was not used during the last budget cycle.
Brown County will not receive a set amount of grants; they will be available to any qualifying family in the state until there are none left.
To qualify, a child must be 4, but not yet 5 years old by Aug. 1, 2019. The grant is geared toward children who will be kindergartners in the 2020-2021 school year.
Families must qualify for the grants by filling out a pre-application, then going through an official application process involving meeting with an intake coordinator in Columbus.
The child must be an Indiana resident. The parents or guardians in the household must have a service need, like working, going to school or attending job training. Those families must also earn less than 127 percent of the federal poverty level.
Grants can only be used with providers that have reached Level 3 or Level 4 on the Paths to Quality scale. Last spring, the preschools at Helmsburg, Sprunica and Van Buren elementary schools received their Level 3 certifications from the voluntary accrediting organization.
Lori’s Ton O Fun Daycare is a Level 4 on Paths to Quality and will have openings after the start of school, owner Lori Williams said.
A full day of preschool in Brown County Schools costs $25; a half-day is $12.
The school district is also able to accept Child Care and Development Fund vouchers from low-income parents to pay for preschool.
About BCS preschool
Brown County Schools accepts preschoolers as young as 3 as long as they are potty-trained. A child with special needs does not have to be potty-trained.
Families don’t have to get their child signed up by the start of the school year; they can start any time.
“There’s no such thing as us being full,” said Deborah Harman, director of student learning.
The district recently applied for another $100,000 expansion grant for its preschool program. It can be used to hire additional teachers to maintain their adult-to-child ratio if more students join the preschool program. It will also be used to pay for preschool teacher training and to put libraries in all preschool classrooms.
“We want the parents to have some good literature to be able to read to their kids,” Harman said.
The grant also can be used to market the preschool program to make sure all families know about it.
“We know from looking at the Indiana Youth Institute data that there are preschoolers living in our county who are not coming to preschool. We don’t know if families aren’t aware of the program. We want to make sure that if they’re not aware, they become aware,” Harman said.
Apply and see
Electronic and printable paper applications for On My Way Pre-K are available by visiting onmywayprek.org.
For parents without internet access at home, the CRC has computers to use to complete the pre-application online or to print it.
“If they wanted to take a paper form and kind of go through it with someone first, they’d be able to do that at the CRC,” Harman said.
Parents will have to gather some documents to be able to apply.
“The most important thing for folks to know is that it’s not a guarantee and there are criteria, but you should get a pretty quick response to know to go to step two or, ‘Sorry, you have not the income eligibility requirement or you don’t appear to be either working or in a course or in training,’” Harman said.
If a parent qualifies for the grant after completing the pre-application, they will be contacted to set up an appointment with their local intake coordinator. The parent also will receive a packet in the mail and the CRC will be there to help them fill out those forms, too.
“Nobody should feel like, ‘I don’t know who’s going to help me,’” Harman said.
At that intake appointment, families will verify their eligibility and complete the application, including choosing which preschool program they want their child to enter.
The CRC is able to help parents get to Columbus for their intake appointment. “We do have some resources at the career center to be able to help with that, or we can certainly put them in contact with Access Brown County (local bus service),” said CRC Director Christy Wrightsman.
If a parent is not working or enrolled in school or participating in a training, the CRC can also help them fulfill that requirement to qualify to receive On My Way Pre-K dollars. Parents can visit the CRC to speak with a Work One representative who can help them in finding a job.
The CRC also offers training to help people become nurses or electricians. Adult basic education courses, such as obtaining a high school equivalency, or taking college classes from Ivy Tech through the CRC also qualify as training for On My Way Pre-K.
Harman said that it is may be difficult for a family to determine if their income is 127 percent below the federal poverty level. They should apply anyway to see if they qualify, she said. “I would really strongly suggest they not say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to make that.’ Apply and see. It’s such a short application and the benefits are so potentially amazing,” Harman said.
“Your child is only going to be going to a high-quality program.”
The grants will allow a child to attend preschool up to full time — five days a week during the entire school day.
Ideally, Harman said the district would like students to attend preschool at least four times a week, like two days of morning and afternoon sessions.
“They’re becoming part of that elementary school community, that community you live, that Helmsburg, Van Buren or Sprunica community,” Wrightsman added.
“They fall in love early with their schools,” Harman added.
Why preschool?
Of the 61 children in the Brown County Schools preschool program last year who were eligible for kindergarten this school year, 55 will be returning as kindergartners.
Children who attend preschool before going to kindergarten are likely to have better overall life outcomes in terms of employment and success, Harman said.
“They are better able to take care of themselves for the rest of their lives,” she said.
Preschoolers learn how to interact with others earlier, which is especially beneficial for children who live out in the country with no real neighbors.
“A mom yesterday said it so well who I was talking to on the phone. She said, ‘We live at the end of a road. My child doesn’t have any contact with other children except for a little bit of time during church, and that’s not very much,’” Harman said.
“(She said) ‘I just want him to have a chance to develop some social skills and understand what school is about before he goes.’”
‘We want to be able to help’
If a parent doesn’t have a job currently but wants one, and a lack of childcare for their 3- or 4-year-old stands in the way of them working, Harman said scholarships may be available from the Brown County Community Foundation to cover the cost of preschool as they work on becoming eligible for On My Way Pre-K grant dollars.
“It’s kind of a Catch-22. I can’t be employed until my child is looked after, and I can’t get my child looked after unless I’m employed and making money to pay for the care,” Harman said.
For the past four school years, the community foundation has provided scholarships to pay for a child to attend four sessions of preschool a week at no cost to the family. About 30 families have used scholarships each year, Harman said.
The original idea was that On My Way Pre-K grant dollars would replace the foundation’s preschool scholarships when the school district became eligible to receive them. But the criteria to receive On My Way Pre-K scholarships is more strict than for the foundation’s scholarships.
Families were eligible for foundation scholarships if their child was eligible for free or reduced lunch, which does not mean a family’s income is 127 percent less than the federal poverty level. The foundation also had no work or training requirement for parents.
“If the parent has applied (for On My Way Pre-K), gone through the process and been denied because they make too much money, then we would want them to apply for a (foundation) scholarship,” Harman said.
Foundation scholarships are available for both 3- and 4-year-olds — another difference from On My Way Pre-K.
Jan Mills, the foundation board’s chair, said the foundation wants to make sure any family in Brown County who wants their child to be in preschool has the opportunity to do so.
“We don’t want anybody to fall through the cracks. If the family can’t qualify (for On My Way Pre-K), but wants a child to use the (scholarship) program, we want to be able to help with that,” she said.
“I would think the community would want to help with that. It’s too critical for the health of our county to not support anybody who wants pre-K.”
This fall, the foundation will set aside money to help parents pay for preschool while they work on becoming eligible for On My Way Pre-K by either starting a job, training course or class.
“Right now, there isn’t money for spring. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t come up with the money for spring, but that’s not something we planned on for this year’s budget,” Mills said.
The foundation is planning a fundraiser to cover scholarships for the spring semester, as well as bring more awareness to preschools here.
The foundation will have a booth at the Brown County Fair with more information on the fundraiser. A date has not been finalized yet.
“We hope the community can rally around and come up with ways somehow, I think everybody putting their heads together, to fund this going forward,” Mills said.
“Us funding it for this fall is a short-term solution, but maybe we as a community need a long-term solution.”
It costs the foundation $20,000 or more a semester to fund the scholarships.
“It’s money well spent, but about $41,000 every year would be a huge part of our grant pool, and there are other needs in Brown County as well,” Mills said.
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Do you have a child who is 4 years old and will start kindergarten in the 2020-2021 school year? On My Way Pre-K may be the program for you.
Beginning now, Indiana families can apply for a grant to cover their 4-year-old’s preschool education this coming school year. Funding will begin in August and grants will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.
To be eligible:
- families must have an income below 127 percent of the federal poverty level;
- a child must be 4 by Aug. 1 and starting kindergarten in the 2020-2021 school year;
- parents and guardians in the household must be working, going to school or attending job training; and
- the family must live in Indiana.
Applications and information are posted at onmywayprek.org.
On My Way Pre-K grants are accepted at all preschools in Brown County Schools’ elementary buildings and at Lori’s Ton O Fun Daycare in Fruitdale.
If you need help accessing the internet, filling out your application or with finding a job or training, call the Career Resource Center of Brown County at 812-988-5880 to schedule an appointment.
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