As schools around the county start up, so do preschools and the Kosciusko County Head Start program.
Some aspects, such as the Early Head Start for prenatal moms through children 3 years old, run all year, while the Head Start program runs from August to May.
Kathryn Fields, Head Start director, explained, “We have our staff come back from their summer break two weeks before the children. So, they come back and they do all their in-service required trainings because all of our sites are Indiana state licensed.”
She continued, saying, “Part of Head Start which makes us a little more unique is we are required to do home visits before the children come. So, the teachers have a week to go out and meet the families in their home setting, get to know the families.”
Fields, the director of the Kosciusko County Head Start program, has worked there for 17 years. “I started as a head start teacher right out of college, and I did that for about six years, and then I moved into a supervisory role.”
In January 2023, the program’s director retired, and Fields took over.
The Head Start program is a needs-based federally funded program for underserved families and children in Kosciusko County. Fields described the program, saying, “All of our services for Early Head Start are offered in the home, so a home-based setting where a qualified home-based teacher will go to your home for an hour and a half and teach educational, developmental health, all kinds of skills for the families and the children, and then our Head Start program is a center-based preschool program for children ages 3 to 5.”
“It is not a first-come, first-serve program,” she stated. “Children have to qualify based on their needs. So at least 90% of our clientele - our demographic here - is at the federal poverty level,” Fields explained. “So it is income-based. We can take a few over-income families, but that means they would need to have other circumstances in their life that helped them qualify for the program.”
The program often gets classified as simply a preschool, but that’s not the case, said Fields.
“Head Start and Early Head Start – again, it's a program for the whole families,” she said. “Our services are wrap-around services for the whole families and we do a lot of community referrals. We do a lot of family service work. We do a lot of goal setting with the families.”
She said, “What I would want people to know is, we do pride ourselves on being an … all-encompassing program for the whole families and a developmentally age-appropriate preschool, a safe environment for these children to come and learn and grow.”
Another misconception is that the services only cover Warsaw.
“We offer services all throughout the county. So we currently have a site here [in] Warsaw where I'm at. There's two classrooms here. We also have a classroom at the Lincoln Elementary School, the Claypool Elementary School, the Harrison Elementary School and the Mentone Elementary School. So spread out around the county. All the classrooms are seven hours a day, Monday through Thursday, 8:15 to 3:15. So seven hours a day, we offer breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. We offer a pretty detailed routine and schedule that the families can know and follow. And we really, really strive to get as much family engagement and family involvement as we can. So we really encourage families who are part of the program to, you know, join our parent committees, join our evening events, join our policy council. The more people who are involved, the better it is for the children and for the program.”
There are challenges and aspects unique to Kosciusko County, including the enrollment criteria. Fields explained, “We base the selection criteria off of our community needs. So we see a lot of families that maybe have been incarcerated or just have other social needs.”
Additionally, the non-English speaking population is served by the program and is a large percentage of the families they help.
“Right now, I think we're … maybe not as high as 20%, but probably pushing 20% dual language learners. We have more than just Spanish-speaking families. We're seeing a really big increase in the Cajun-Creole population. So, fortunately for the Spanish-speaking families, we have several staff, at least four of that I can think of, that speak Spanish. So we have those interpreters.”
The program sees success in many different ways.
“We have individual successes and big successes. All the time. At the end of the year, just knowing that our children are ready to go on to the next step, going on to kindergarten. Hearing feedback from families of how much the program has helped get their child ready. Hearing feedback from kindergarten teachers, which we do, you know. They reach out to us and say, ‘We know the kids that came to head start, we know that they're ready.’”