The Kentucky Governor’s Office of Early Childhood (GOEC) recently announced the 2019 School Readiness Summit grant awards. Owensboro Public Schools and Audubon Area Head Start were awarded a total of $60,000 through the grant awards.
With recently secured grant funding provided by The Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care and the Department of Education, Office of Health Learning, through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), this grant will focus on strengthening Kentucky’s comprehensive early care and education system, to support all young children and their caregivers.
“We’ve had several discussions on ways to better serve our families and this grant will allow us to actually plan activities to attempt outreach for unserved preschool children and their families in our service area,” said Hager Preschool Principal Sherry Baber.
The School Readiness Summit grant awarded $45,000 to Owensboro Public Schools and the district was awarded an additional $15,000 after applying for a School Readiness Summit alumni grant.
“We are so fortunate to have received this generous gift from the Kentucky Governor’s Office of Early Childhood,” said OPS Chief Academic Officer Matthew Constant. “Early childhood education is so important in the education journey and this will allow us to expand our outreach to our community even more.”
Through this grant, Owensboro Public Schools, in partnership with Audubon Area Head Start will build on existing partnerships and relationships to improve the leveraging of resources across programs and agencies, build capacity of local leaders with regard to programs, communications, outreach to families, and engagement strategies, and to ensure children receive timely, effective, and high-quality services that are responsive to their needs.
“In the past year, the services Audubon Area Head Start and Owensboro Public Schools has been able to provide to families in our community has grown exponentially,” said Audubon Area Head Start Director Angela Messmer. “We have recently been able to offer all-day preschool and this grant will allow us the opportunity to do even more for our families.”
The contract for the grants will begin November 15, 2019.
