The CNMI has a \u201cvery good chance\u201d of getting a $95,000 competitive federal grant to start an Early Head Start program, according to Tim Thornburg, federal programs officer for the Public Schools System.<\/p>\n
News of whether schools get funding from these competitive grants usually come toward the end of September, Thornburg said in an interview last week.<\/p>\n
Guam, according to what Thornburg has been told, was \u201cnot a problem\u201d when it came to competition in the region for the grant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe suspect that there may be only one entity [in the region] that applied for [the grant], but we simply don\u2019t know,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to him, applications for competitive grants are submitted electronically. \u201cWe find out when we find out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the grant might be divided among applicants or just awarded on a points basis and whoever \u201chas the highest points gets it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thornburg confirmed that the program would essentially be a new program with a new director, staff, and other personnel and would be built on the current Head Start program\u2019s capacity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some Head Start centers with some additional space so we could co-locate [the two programs],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said PSS\u2019 chances are \u201cvery good\u201d based on how they have met the federal criteria for the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey wanted to see at a minimum that we were serving at least 72 infants and toddlers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The PSS\u2019 Early Head Start program was developed to serve 80 infants and toddlers.<\/p>\n
He said that based on federal visits, PSS has been praised for \u201cvery good job\u201d in establishing a model program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, \u2018We would like to see you with Early Head Start.\u2019 [And] this time we\u2019re doing it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some of the personnel required for the program, according to the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center website, are education and child development, health-related, parent involvement, and disability services staff, as well as a fiscal staff and program and center directors.<\/p>\n
ECLKC noted that a staff member could serve more than one role, provided they are qualified.<\/p>\n
Center-based programs are required one qualified teacher for every four infants or toddlers, with maximum group size being eight infants or toddlers and their two teachers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI has a \u201cvery good chance\u201d of getting a $95,000 competitive federal grant to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[37,51,591,40],"class_list":["post-178741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-education-2","tag-guam","tag-head-start","tag-pss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}