The St. Joseph Parents as Teachers program could be the recipient of a portion of state aid set aside Wednesday by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon.
67-million in state revenue was released by Nixon’s office Wednesday for priorities including Preschool, College Scholarships and Workforce Training. Among that funding is $1,000,000 for the state’s Parents as Teachers program.
The program helps organizations and professionals work with parents during the early years of their children’s lives, from conception to kindergarten. In St. Joseph, the program aids around 1,200 families.
“It’s driven by the mission that parents are their child’s first and best teacher,” said Debbie Kunz, St. Joseph Parents as Teachers coordinator.
Even though the state has set aside the funding, the amount that could be distributed locally is still unknown.
“The state will look at end of the year reports for all programs around the state and they’ll decide how to most equitably allocate the additional million dollars, ” Kunz said. “St Joseph is a strong program and we accomplish a lot here so our hope is that our work will be rewarded with additional reimbursement to our program.”
She said the St. Joseph program would put the funds to good use.
“It would mean we could serve more families, so more families who wanted to participate in Parents as Teachers would be able to particularly with more frequent visits, also more group connections, ” Kunz said.
Also, the additional funds could aid the organization to create a new program in the community.
“I have a new goal for this next year that I would like to start doing what they call a parent cafe, ” Kunz said. “It’s designed to get people sharing about their parenting an then empowering them to be the best they can be for their child.”
In 2009 Parents as Teacher took around a 60-percent hit in state aid. Kunz said total funding had been around $35-million. Even with an increase this year of $1-million the program would still only see a total state allocation of around $15-million.
“When you divide that between all the school districts in the state of Missouri it doesn’t end up being a lot for each individual program and we’re still at least 50 percent less if not more than we were 5-years-ago,” Kunz said.
And in the past five years she said the state saw a decrease in child readiness.
“An increase of special education referrals at an older age because they were not caught through Parents as Teachers, They’re seeing more kids coming to school not meeting the score that they want them to meet for Kindergarten entry, and seeing parents struggle with the hardest job that they’re ever going to do which is parenting,” Kunz said.