The Hot Springs Village Head Start program is closing and the students will be relocated, according to local Head Start officials and parents.
Head Start, a federally funded national preschool program administered by Community Services Office that is designed to meet schooling needs of low-income families, reportedly informed parents whose students attend the Hot Springs Village facility of its closure July 19, according to a parent of one of its students and an email received by The Sentinel-Record.
Though the program promises the relocation of that facility's students to other Head Start facilities within Garland County, one parent -- and others, she claims -- are not pleased with the decision.
According to Leslie Paschal Barnes, executive director of CSO of Garland County, the students who were set to return to Hot Springs Village's Head Start program will be placed into the three other Head Start programs within the county.
"We're looking at a total of six students that need to be placed," she said.
Barnes said that the decision comes three weeks prior to the program's 2017-2018 school year start date. She said that she believes three weeks to be "more than enough time" for the parents.
Michelle Sommer, of Hot Springs Village, said that she was given a day's notice to decide which of the three programs -- one in Mountain Pine, the other two on Garden and Main streets in Hot Springs -- she would use for her 4-year-old daughter, Lily. She said that in order to keep her daughter under the same teacher, she would send Lily to the Head Start program on Main Street.
Sommer said that she and the other parents are frustrated with the commute that has been created with the closure, especially with that part of the county already not accommodating small children.
"We don't have playgrounds, we don't have things for them to do, and now we don't even have a preschool," she said.
Sommer explained that the closest preschool to Hot Springs Village is under Jessieville school district, which she said is filled.
"There's nothing we can do about it," Sommer said.
Sommer said that Head Start's offices did not disclose the reason for the Hot Springs Village program's closing. The Sentinel-Record asked Paschal, Garland County Head Start Director Mary Jean Daniel and one of the closed facility's teachers the same question, and received a similar response.
"The answer to my question, 'Why?', was 'Because it's all we can do,'" Sommer said.
Barnes said that the move "may seem like a setback for parents," but that "there will be no gaps in the services provided to the students and parents."
"We are here to provide services to these students and their parents," Barnes said. "We are here to hopefully move forward."
Local on 07/24/2017