In upcoming months, James C. Rosser Elementary School will no longer be vacant but filled with pre-K students.
The Sunflower County Consolidated School District will receive $935,000 in grant funds from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to remodel and repurpose the James C. Rosser Elementary School building in Moorhead.
The facility will be a centrally-located site for Pre-Kindergarten students, Sunflower County Consolidated School District Superintendent Miskia Davis said.
“If we could have better prepared, better educated, very disciplined pre-K children going into kindergarten then it will matriculate on as they go to middle school and then high school” Davis said.
“This project will allow the school district to renovate the old elementary school building and transform it into a state-of-the-art learning facility for all Pre-K students” said Davis.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is an independent, private foundation founded by breakfast cereal pioneer Will Keith Kellogg. According to the organization, it is guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive.
Instead of several different locations throughout the county, the funding opportunity allows the district to place all Pre-K students in the same learning environment, Davis said.
There are plans to fill more seats and add more Pre-K classrooms while hiring highly qualified and licensed teachers for their classrooms.
Leigh Ann Reynolds, Director of Early Childhood Learning, was the project lead in writing this grant and will also oversee the new facility and program.
Reynolds would like for the facility to leave a lasting impact on students.
“We saw a great need in Sunflower County for more High Quality Pre-K classrooms so that we could better provide a strong foundation and prepare our county's 4-year-old children for kindergarten and the years beyond.”
Setting the foundation, the grant is an opportunity to strengthen the Sunflower Consolidated School District as a whole, she said.
“High quality early education is critical to ensuring students’ long-term academic success” said Reynolds. “This new early learning center will assist in closing gaps that we so often see in our students in third grade and beyond.”
The district is still in the planning process but the project is expected to take about three months once it gets started, hopefully in the fall.
“We’re hoping to have everything up and running, children in the building by January 2020” said Davis.
