Last year, the Lamar County School District collected approximately $190,000 in state tax credits from taxpayers to benefit the county’s early learning collaborative, which serves 240 pre-kindergarten children enrolled in the program.
This year surpassed those efforts by more than $423,000, as the program was the recipient of $619,380 that will allow the school district to start two new classrooms that will serve about 40 more children.
“I’m super excited, and I’m a huge supporter of early childhood education,” school district superintendent Steven Hampton said. “I just feel like it’s going to help our students. “It’s not about us as a district, and it’s nothing about test scores; it’s just getting those students in and setting them on a path to be able to learn how to read.”
During the recent tax season, which ended Dec. 31, individuals were able to contribute to the early learning collaborative for the opportunity to be eligible to receive a 1:1 state tax credit for the donated amount up to $1 million. The funds are earmarked strictly for Pre-K measures such as programs, supplies and classrooms.
“We are wanting to start at least two new classrooms, because that will allow us to expand our offering from 240 kids that are currently in our district to 280, because there are 20 kids per class,” Hampton said. “We’ll be able to do that, and we’ll be able to help provide our local childcare centers with more professional development and things like that to help support them.
“The whole goal is to get those kids who are not in some type of learning environment … to get them in (that) so they can start to read sooner. The sooner they can learn how to read, the sooner they can read to learn. The research says that the sooner we can get that, the better track they’ll be on for the success of their future.”
An exact location for the new classrooms has not been set as officials are still looking at areas of greatest need. If there is enough funding, a third classroom may even be initiated.
“Some of this money was earmarked to go to high-poverty, low socioeconomic areas, so we’ve got to make sure that we honor that and see that it goes into areas where our highest needs are,” Hampton said. “We still have to take all those factors into consideration.”
District officials also are looking into other endeavors once restrictions caused by COVID-19 loosen or end.
“We provide experiences like field trips and going to the zoo,” Hampton said. “Learning doesn’t always take place inside of a classroom, so we want to be able to provide our young students with experiences as well. “I talked to several of our (tax) donors, and in my opinion there’s no better investment that can be made than into the future of students. So, I’m just super excited about it.”
