Catawba County Schools hopes to hear next week if it has received a $1.5 million grant to provide funding for a program for children that begins when the mother is pregnant and lasts until the child turns 3.
Early Head Start is designed to help low-income children by using in-home services for 80 children and pregnant mothers. The grant is split into $769,938 the first year and $763,954 the second year. The program would hire one Early Head Start coordinator, one parent resource coordinator, one mental-health clinician and seven parent educators. They would each have a caseload of about 12 families.
"We will serve many families we couldn't serve otherwise," Paul Holden, director of student services for Catawba County Schools, told the board of education Monday night.
The educators would make 90-minute home visits with families as well as attend semi-monthly group meetings, before transitioning families to other support and pre-kindergarten groups like Head Start.
The mental-health clinician will provide therapies for the families. The parent resource coordinator will conduct enrollment, application and eligibility. The Early Head Start coordinator will oversee the staff and ensure they are in compliance with Head Start rules and standards.
"Our hope is it won't be just a two-year program. That they won't put all this infrastructure in place and then take it away," Holden said. "I hope there will be some continuity to it."
In other business, the Catawba County Schools Board of Education approved the school calendar for the 2010-11 school year. The calendar is largely the same as this year's calendar, with school starting Aug. 19 for staff and Aug. 25 for students.
One big change is the built-in snow day, scheduled for Feb. 21. If it snows any time before Feb. 21 and school is out, the school system can make up that day on Feb. 21, said Pat Hensley, assistant superintendent of human resources for Catawba County Schools. However, if that day hasn't been used as a make-up day, all students and 10-month employees, including teachers, will not have school Feb. 21.
"It gives us a day to play with," Hensley said.
Another addition is Sept. 27 as a teacher conference day, which is a mandated teacher workday and cannot be taken as an annual leave day for employees.
"We were getting a lot of feedback that they wanted another day for parent conferences," Hensley said.
Christmas and New Year's are on Saturdays in 2011. Easter isn't until April 24, pushing spring break late into the semester. The last day of school for students is June 10, while the last day for staff is June 16.
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