BEDFORD – North Lawrence Community Schools celebrated the official ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday evening, launching an innovative program for families in the community.
The goal of playful pathways is to offer education for children at a younger age. Starting at 12 weeks old, up until they are five or eligible for kindergarten, this program’s focus is working with these children from 12 weeks to graduation. This will open the door for families, and follow a push for early childhood education of future engineers, doctors, lawyers, construction trades, welders, and more.
Each classroom is dedicated to specific age groups, to help maintain a balance of care and learning, and offers the opportunity to drop children off at 6:30 a.m. and can pick them up as late as 6 p.m., while having the ability to pick them up during any point through the day.
The event saw NLCS Superintendent Dr. Ty Mungle, Indiana Department of Education Director of Student Pathways Dr. Flora Jones, Early Learning Coordinator Shellie Pritchett, and Principal Director Christy Wintczak address the crowd about the excitement in finally reaching their goals through this program.
Dr. Jones remarked that she learned about some of the concerns and challenges that rural communities and their school corporations have to deal with. Learning how the Indiana Department of Education can support the students and school corporations.
“The goal is to not for the students to remain students for the rest of their lives,” Dr. Jones said. “But what we do want to do is to bring up great community citizens. Valued citizens, students who will become adults in their communities, have gainful employment. And how do we do that? By supporting programs like we have here this evening. When I think about 12 weeks to graduation what a model, what an opportunity to shine across this state, and not just this state but across the nation, to say look what are we doing in this rural community. Students can be whatever they want to be because my thing is ‘If I can see it, I can be it.'”
Dr. Mungle shared the excitement in having this program available for families in Lawrence County, and how astounding it is to finally have the capability to do so.
“As an educator, it is mind-blowing that we can take a 12-week-old child and we can take them all the way to graduation in our public schools, in Lawrence County, and we have that capability here,” said Dr. Mungle. “This is a model that both Dr. Jones and I feel should be shared across the state, and we are excited with what we have started.”
An open house was held following the ribbon-cutting ceremony that gave parents, teachers, and the community a chance to look at some of the efforts being put into early childhood education by NLCS.
Several community partners including the United Way of South Central Indiana, Lawrence County Community Foundation, Lawrence County Growth Council, North Lawrence Career Center, IU Health Hospital Bedford, and many community partners helped to make this possible.
The Playful Pathways is fully staffed to help students learn and explore many things during the day.
