About the Summer Transition Program
*126 sites will host the summer transition program, including one in Cherokee, 12 in Clayton, five in Cobb, 21 in DeKalb, 17 in Fulton and five in Gwinnett
Length: six weeks
Cost: $24,000 per class or $3,024,000.
Students per classroom: 16, total of 2,016
Previous years: 2010, 60 classrooms in 19 counties; 2011, 59 classrooms in 23 counties; 2012, 59 classrooms in 18 counties.
SOURCE: Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning.
Georgia this year is doubling the number of very young children it will have in summer school — hoping to get them on track for kindergarten.
About 2,000 of the state’s 4- and 5-year-olds — half from metro Atlanta — will be participating in an abbreviated version of the state’s often-lauded pre-kindergarten program for six weeks this summer.
Most are children from low-income families who didn’t go to Head Start or who were among the thousands on waiting lists for the state’s 170-day, lottery-funded pre-k program.
Others were in state pre-k but still need additional support to be ready to start kindergarten in the fall, said Susan Adams, assistant commissioner for pre-k at Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning.
Since 2010, Georgia has been offering a summer transition program that has been free to about 1,000 rising kindergarteners at about 60 public and private pre-k centers across the state.
This year, with some evidence that it is working, the program is expanding to 126 classes and more than 2,000 students, statewide. Its costs — about $3 million — are being covered by Child and Parent Services (CAPS), a federally funded program run by DECAL that is designed to allow low-income parents to work or attend job training while their children are in high-quality early education programs.
“These six weeks can potentially make all the difference in the world for these students as they prepare to enter kindergarten this fall,” said Bobby Cagle, commissioner of Bright from the Start.
Stay-at-home mom Tameka Jamison is hoping daughter Ashanti Staples, 5, will get the professional help she needs in the program being offered at Childcare Network on Lower Roswell Road in Marietta.
Jamison has taught Ashanti how to read, write, identify her colors and tie her shoes. But the little girl, who Jamison says is always smiling, struggles to write her name without a backward S.
“That’s all she needs,” Jamison said.
Georgia has long been considered a national leader in early education, mainly for recognizing the importance of pre-kindergarten and for launching a voluntary program open to all 4-year-olds, regardless of family income, two decades ago.
Researchers have found that pre-k is particularly beneficial to children from poorer families. Many of them, the research suggests, trail in vocabulary, social skills and pre-academic content, such as letter recognition, all of which are believed to be strong predictors of later school success.
The summer transition program started as a pilot, in part, to help some of the 6,000 to 8,000 children who land on waiting lists each year when 82,000-plus 4-year-olds have filled all available space in the regular, lottery-funded pre-k program, said Reg Griffin, Bright from the Start spokesman.
Its expansion follows annual program evaluations, including one in 2010, showing that students’ skills improved significantly over the six weeks.
Participation is limited to children whose families earn 85 percent of the state annual medium income, $67,276 or less for a family of four.
The program has a small staff to student ratio: one teacher with at least a bachelor’s degree and one assistant teacher with early childhood certification, for every class of 16 students. Language, literacy and math are the primary focuses, and each class also has a transition coach whose job includes helping parents understand the expectations for kindergarten.
Anitra Moore, a Decatur mom who works in medical billing and collections, said she’s hoping the six-week program will help son Josiah retain what he learned this year in regular pre-k.
“I hope they help him stay on track so he doesn’t lose any of the learning — the ABCs, the counting,” Moore said. “I just need to make sure he’s going to be 100 percent, that he’s going to be ready for kindergarten.”
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