By LESLIE COLLINS
Northeast News
September 18, 2013

“This was a competition, folks, and you won,” Gov. Jay Nixon said during a Sept. 13 press conference at Woodland Early Learning Community School in Historic Northeast. “We’re here not on accident.”

Of all the grant proposals submitted, Kansas City Public Schools’ (KCPS) proposal for Woodland earned the No. 1 spot, he said. That No. 1 spot equates to $480,000 from the state’s Neighborhood Assistance Program (NAP) to be used for renovations to Woodland.

Built in 1921, Woodland previously functioned as Woodland Elementary School and was later de-commissioned. Charter school Woodland-Edison Classical Academy then took over the building but moved out in 2008. Since 2008, the building has remained vacant until this year, where KCPS will use the building as an early childhood education center for three and four-year-olds. By next year, KCPS expects attendance to reach 320 students at Woodland, which will provide an extra 170 slots.

Nixon also announced that the school district will receive an additional $1 million through NAP to go toward a $4.2 million project headed by the Emmanuel Family Childhood Development Center, KCPS and Swope Community Builders to build a 28,000 square foot early childhood education center. The center will allow the Emmanuel Family Childhood Development Center to offer its programming under one roof, instead of being spread out across the city, and will provide an additional 103 early childhood education slots. The project will also allow Emmanuel to reach out to an extra 125 at-risk youth.

The grants are part of the newly launched Start Smart Initiative aimed at supporting the development and expansion of “high quality” early childhood and pre-kindergarten programs across the state. It’s a smart investment with a big return, Nixon said.

“A strong early childhood education opens more doors of opportunities later in life for Missouri children,” he said.

Early childhood education has been one of his top priorities this year, he said, adding that the impacts of education last a lifetime.

“I’m just ecstatic,” KCPS Superintendent Dr. Stephen Green told Northeast News of receiving the grants. “We think it was a tremendous trophy and we’re going to win more.”