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Budget ax falls on Mahoning preschools
BOARDMAN — Danitra Liguore will soon be laid off from the job she loves as a preschool teacher, but her dedication to her pupils is such that she has applied for a lower-paid lead child-care worker position in the same preschool program.
“I want to do everything I can to be there for the children and their families,” said Liguore, a teacher in the ill-fated Early Learning Initiative program at Lockwood United Methodist Church in Boardman. “You’re reaching a child’s heart every day you go to work,” she added.
Liguore, who has been teaching at Lockwood for three years, is one of five Mahoning County teachers being laid off, effective with the state-funded program’s Aug. 21 termination.
The demise of the program because of state budget constraints will result in jobs lost for 27 people and the closing of two full-day, full-year county preschool centers. Five classrooms are being eliminated from the program.
Besides the five teachers, two staff-training specialists and 20 child-care and classroom assistants will be laid off.
The centers closing Aug. 21 are at the Pace School, 2800 Shady Run Road, Youngstown, and the center at 306 W. Texas Ave., Sebring, said Lenal Morello, family services supervisor at the Mahoning County Educational Service Center.
“I enjoy finding ways to encourage each child to reach their full potential. We feel the children are our future. It’s my job to prepare them for it,” said Liguore, who received her bachelor’s degree in early-childhood education from Youngstown State University in 2001.
“In this area, it’s tough to find a job” in early-childhood education, Liguore observed, adding that her friends tell her there are more jobs available in her field in the Southern states.
The county ESC operates 13 preschool centers, which collectively employ 150 workers and enroll a total of 330 students in early-learning initiative and a separate program for disabled students. ELI was funded at $132 million annually and serves 14,400 children statewide.
Parents of ELI children are being encouraged by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to apply through their county JFS departments to transfer their children into the state’s subsidized child-care program.
The 11 remaining ESC-operated centers will enroll children under subsidized child care, or the federally and locally funded program for disabled children or as private-pay pupils. Parents must be working or enrolled in an education or training program to qualify for the subsidized child-care program.
Although the subsidized child-care program has no state-mandated educational component, the 11 remaining centers will continue to offer preschool education.
“The opportunity for a child to have a bright and productive future should not be dictated by the state budget,” Morello said.
Besides Lockwood, an ESC-operated center that will remain open is the YSU Little Penguins Child Study Center, which enrolls 40 children in rent-free, street-level quarters at the university’s Beeghly College of Education.
The university center, which includes a large, fenced-in outdoor playground, enrolls children of YSU students and serves as a learning laboratory for the university’s early-childhood education students and for high school students studying this subject at Choffin Career Center.
The center, which operates from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. all year long, employs eight full-time and two part-time workers.
Enrichment activities there include walking field trips to the main public library, the university’s planetarium and the Butler Institute of American Art.
“We prepare them to be open to a classroom environment when they go to kindergarten,” Patty Dragovich, a child-care worker at the YSU center, said of the preschool children.
MAHONING COUNTY | Preschool centers
The preschools that operate under the Mahoning County Educational Service Center. For more information and enrollment, call (330) 965-7828, ext. 1059
Youngstown: YSU Little Penguins Child Study Center, Youngstown State University, 1 University Plaza.
Sebring: B.L. Miller Elementary School, 506 W. Virginia Ave.
Campbell: Campbell Elementary School, 2002 Community Circle.
Austintown: Fitch High School, 4560 Falcon Drive; Leonard Kirtz School, 4801 Woodbridge Drive.
North Jackson: Jackson-Milton Elementary School, 14110 Mahoning Ave.
Boardman: Lockwood United Methodist Church, 4570 Lockwood Blvd.
Canfield: Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, 7300 N. Palmyra Road.
New Middletown: St. Paul the Apostle Church, 10143 Main St
Struthers: Struthers Public Preschool, 230 E. Manor Ave.
Beloit: West Branch Beloit Elementary School, 14409 Beloit-Snodes Road.
Source: Mahoning County Educational Service Center