A new partnership between the Sunflower County Consolidated School District and Delta Health Alliance will get curriculum for the district’s pre-K students and DHA’s Head Start pupils on the same page.
The partnership, announced in a release this week, is designed to improve the services for all pre-K families in Sunflower County.
“This new collaborative will allow all pre-K children to be dually enrolled this school year into the Head Start program to provide comprehensive services for the entire family,” said Dr. Karen Matthews, president and CEO of DHA. “The early education of our four-year-old children builds a foundation that will take them through high school and beyond.”
SCCSD Superintendent Miskia Davis said that data already available from the district’s Early Learning Collaborative, which set the stage for this partnership, shows the benefits of pre-K programs locally.
“Research from the district’s Early Learning Collaborative shows that students who participate in the pre-K programs experience greater success as they matriculate through the K-12 educational system,” Davis said in the release.
Pre-K classrooms within the district and DHA’s Head Start classrooms will use the same curriculum moving forward called Opening the World to Learning (OWL).
Students will also be part of the STAR Early Literacy and Brigance learning assessments conducted in the fall and spring, the release said, and all lead teachers will hold a bachelor of science degree in early childhood education.
For more information about the new partnership in Sunflower County, please contact Leigh Ann Reynolds of the Sunflower County Consolidated School District at 662-246-5395. She can also be reached via email at lreynolds@sunflower.k12.ms.us.
