Great Start Readiness Program is Michigan’s tuition-free preschool program for 4-year-olds. On June 8, 2020. Traverse City Area Public Schools voted to lay off teachers for this program and opted not to apply to contract for slots for the 2020-2021 school year. Just over 140 slots for this program will be lost and families of qualifying 4-year-olds will be at a loss for education for fall 2020. This program promotes development of social skills, emotional growth, and psychical coordination as well as cognitive preparation. Believe it or not Kindergarten has high expectations for children, much more so then it did when we were kids. Children from economically disadvantaged households will disproportionately not be ready for kindergarten.
At this critical time when families are impacted by job loss and high rates of unemployment, it is even more critical for children to be in quality care. Traverse City Area Schools have provided this program for nearly 30 years and are now dropping the program due to a forecasted budget deficit of $125,000.
Traverse Bay Intermediate School District has extended the deadline for community partners to apply for these slots to July 27. Traverse City Area Public Schools can still apply to host these classrooms, if even for a short time, so transition planning can happen for another agency to support students and not permanently lose these slots back to Lansing.
We want Traverse City Area Public Schools to call the laid off teachers back to work and apply to host GSRP classrooms for at least the 2020-2021 school year to afford us the time to plan a transition of the program to another agency.
If the deadline of July 27 passes with no parent or community support to examine this issue further, 6 classrooms of 4-year old preschool will be abandoned and these children will geographically not have access to quality care and education. The unused slots will go back to Lansing and not be available to our local families even if an interested agency steps forward after July 27.
If the board can be persuaded to call these teachers back and run GSRP for one more year until another agency can be identified to host the program, Grand Traverse County will keep these slots and families can access this educational program.