WARSAW — Warsaw Community Schools recently announced the closing of two of its HighScope preschools and parents are not happy.

The announcement came earlier this spring that WCS will close its high-scope preschools at Leesburg Elementary School and Claypool Elementary School and replace them with Head Start programs. WCS Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert cites lack of state funding as the main reason for closing the programs.

While the demands of kindergarten are becoming more rigorous, according to Hoffert the state government does not yet recognize preschool education as something necessary to fund.

For now, the plan is for the Head Start programs at Claypool and Leesburg to include the HighScope curriculum.

Parents, meanwhile, have been expressing concern over the fact that, in order to qualify for Head Start, parents’ income has to fall below a certain amount, meaning many Leesburg and Claypool-area parents will no longer be eligible to send their students to preschool.

“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,” Keri Glennie, Claypool, said in a recent letter to the editor.

Hoffert noted other states have begun funding preschool education and he hopes Indiana will join suit.