Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. has received an $80,000 grant to defray COVID-19 expenses for its pre-K classrooms in the coming school year.
The grant money is from the Come Back Stronger Fund provided through Early Learning Indiana.
Early Learning Indiana has allocated $6,184,000 to 449 providers across the state through a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., to reinforce Indiana’s supply of high-quality early learning opportunities, especially for the state’s most vulnerable children, state officials said. The grant money will support more than 21,327 children in Indiana.
The Come Back Stronger Fund grant was awarded to Busy Bees Academy, Columbus Signature Academy Fodrea, Parkside Elementary, Southside Elementary and Taylorsville Elementary. According to director of title services Gina Pleak, BCSC applied for the grant a few weeks, ago, received word of their grant awards on June 11 and signed the contracts this past week.
“The requirements are COVID-19-related expenses to help prepare for the new school year,” Pleak said. “So the grant period goes from June 15, to March 31, 2021.”
While BCSC is still determining the specifics of what to use the funding for, cleaning supplies will most likely be among the expenses, Pleak said. More specifics will come out as BCSC develops its reopening plans and more reopening guidelines for child care providers are released.
Shane Yates, BCSC’s pre-K director, has reached out to staff members for ideas on what needs to be purchases for the transition of returning to school in the fall, Pleak said.
“Everything continues to change as we learn more about COVID-19,” Pleak said. “But we have until March to spend, and that’s why we just want to make sure that how we’re spending it is a responsible way to be spending the money to help with the school year.”
Outside of BCSC, two other Bartholomew County child care programs received Come Back Stronger grants — Children, Inc. and Learn by Heart.
According to executive director Jill Hammer, Children, Inc was awarded $27,500 to spend on COVID-19 expenses for children age 6 weeks to pre-K.
“We have been open this whole time and working and trying to keep, of course, this whole social distancing with the kids,” Hammer said. “So what this grant will help us do is will help us buy PPE supplies and cleaning supplies to make sure that the building is sanitized and disinfected on a regular basis and to make sure we’re cautious with wearing our face masks.”
Hammer said that the grant will also help Children, Inc purchase additional classroom materials, such as markers and crayons, so that children won’t have to share items and risk spreading germs.
Learn by Heart of Grammer is also looking to buy more classroom materials and toys for its students so that sharing can be avoided, said Lesley Moss, who co-owns the business with her sister and is also one of its teachers.
According to Moss, Learn by Heart is a small, state-licensed “home provider” of child care that has a capacity of about 12 children. Because the grants are partially on the number of enrolled students, Learn by Heart was eligible for $2,000 to $3,000 due to its size.
The facility was awarded $3,000 (for children under age 1 to 5 years old). Moss said Learn by Heart has lower-income students that qualified the facility for this increased amount.
Moss said that the child care business is looking to spend its grant money mainly on “non-consumable items” such as steam cleaning systems, bedding that’s easier to wash (as it will have to be washed more often) and cots.
“There’s always the obvious cleaning supplies that everybody needs to reopen, but we’re looking kind of longer-term at how we can stay safe and continue this, because it’s, of course, unknown how long any of this is going to go on,” she said.
She also said that Learn by Heart hopes to install more touch-free devices such as touch-free soap and paper towel dispensers.
At the moment, Learn by Heart is not open. Moss saidthe child care business “closed voluntarily in early March.”
“We felt we couldn’t safely remain open, just because there were so many unknowns,” she said. “And then after a few weeks, of course, all of the families of the children in our care were off work anyway and didn’t have any intention of sending their kids. So we’ve remained closed primarily for that reason. We have at least one parent in every household of our children that are enrolled that are still off-work and hesitant to send their kids anywhere.”
She said the business plans to reopen on Aug. 3.
