Recently, the Warsaw School System announced that they would be closing the high-scope preschool programs at Claypool and Leesburg Elementary. The school system stated that they were closing them for lack of funding.

One thing that was very upsetting to me and to a lot of the other parents was that they waited till after all other preschools had had their pre-enrollment and filled their openings before announcing that would not be funding the preschools and would be closing at the end of this school period. They did state that they will still have Head Start Preschool at these locations.

That doesn’t help any of us who do not qualify for this program, so this would leave most of  the 60 sets of parents with no place to send their children to preschool. For the two previous years I have sent my oldest child to the this high scope program at Claypool. Words cannot describe the good things about that school, the teachers and what he learned. He not only learned social skills, but skills to help him excel in his environment and numerous other things about animals, geography, the planet, daily living and so much more.

I was planning on sending my second child this fall, 2016, for the next two years to this amazing program. He had been on the waiting list for the two years and I didn’t sign him up anywhere else knowing he was first on the list at Claypool. I can’t believe that the school board cannot see how important these preschool programs are for our children. They are expected to know so much before entering kindergarten these days and so many of the church base preschools are shutting down around us.

So, what options does that leave us to educate our children and have them ready for kindergarten? I really am shocked. It seems there is funding at Warsaw for so  many other things that are way less important than our children’s educations. How can they not see how important this program is to our children?

Keri Glennie
Claypool