Money to be spent on upgrading furniture and other interior items
Published in the Sept. 2-15, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Preschool migrant children will get nicer classroom facilities at El Toro and San Martin/Gwinn elementary schools thanks to $40,000 in federal funds grants that will be used to upgrade furniture and other interior decorating features.
Ivonne Glenn, director of state and federal programs with the Morgan Hill Unified School District, found out recently that the migrant education program at Santa Clara County had additional allocated funding comes from the federal government’s Title 1 program. She decided to submit requests for $20,000 for El Toro Elementary School as well as an additional $20,000 for San Martin/Gwinn Environmental Science Academy to improve the rooms used for educating preschool migrant children.
Last year, the MHUSD opened migrant preschool programs at P.A. Walsh STEAM Academy and San Martin Gwinn. This year, a classroom at El Toro was opened to expand the program.
“The rooms are functional but they are not ideal,” Glenn said. “So when this opportunity came up, I put my energy into really getting some furniture that the children deserved. So we submitted a proposal to furnish two of the rooms with state-of-the-art facilities so the rooms will be geared to pre-school children three to four year olds. They’re designed to provide a learning environment to really gear them to be academically, socially and emotionally ready for school.”
She received Aug. 26 the notification that the county approved the funding to set up the classrooms appropriately, she said. She and teachers will use the money to redesign the classrooms using Lakeshore Learning Company equipment. They expect to have the rooms finished by the end of September.
Morgan Hill does not that many preschool programs focused on socio-economically disadvantaged students, she said. The MHUSD’s migrant preschools are one of the few options parents have.
“We actually had a really high review commending the district for focusing on early intervention for underrepresented students,” she said.
Last year the school district served about 400 migrant students from preschool to 12th grade, and this year the number will grow because of the popularity of the program. About 100 are at P.A. Walsh, almost 100 are at San Martin/Gwinn, and a third 100 are distributed among Sobrato, Central and Live Oak high schools. A fourth 100 are scattered among the remaining schools.
“Thirty-three percent of our full allocation goes to our preschool program due to the fact that we believe that early education is the way that we start literacy, and socio-emotional skills for students to really prepare them for kindergarten,” Glenn said.
In the preschool programs, children are first taught in Spanish, then later transition to English.
“They are very well prepared when they enter kindergarten,” she said.
The district spends about $1 million for migrant education a year, all of which is federally funded.
“A trend in Morgan Hill is that the migrant population has increased over the years here,” Glenn said. “So we see the need for more support at an early age, that’s the reason we’ve expanded our preschool program this year. We also have higher migrant intervention teachers.”
The upgraded classroom equipment will let preschool children learn more effectively, said MHUSD Superintendent Steve Betando.
“We are so pleased that our growing population of migrant preschool children will develop with the help of classrooms furnished through this grant,” he said.
