Educators: Parents as Teachers needs more money

DESE asks governor for $5.4 million increase

Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has asked Gov. Mike Parson for an approximately $5.4 million increase in funding for the Parents as Teachers program, in a move to serve thousands of families who are on waiting lists to receive free parenting guidance and resources.

"All parents can benefit from this," Shauna Kerperin said of the Parents as Teachers program. Kerperin is the PAT coordinator for the Blair Oaks R-2 School District.

Missouri provides PAT services through its public school system. The program connects families with prenatal to kindergarten entry-aged children to developmental screenings and resources through monthly visits - or more, for families with high needs - by trained parent educators.

High needs can include disabilities or chronic health conditions in children, low educational attainment, or low income or single parent status in families. Sixty percent of families in Missouri's PAT program have low incomes; 31 percent have children with a disability or other long-term health condition; 26 percent are single parent households and 16 percent have low educational attainment, according to DESE.

The numbers add up to more than 100 percent because some families have more than one high need.

Katie Epema, the PAT coordinator for Jefferson City Public Schools, said 65.5 percent of the families served by the district in its program through home visits last year had at least one "stressor," and 23.5 percent had three or more stressors.

The stressors experienced by families in the JCPS PAT program match up with the top four statewide, according to DESE, listed above, "but we also have quite a few families who are speakers of other languages."

Other stressors include: substance abuse; a death in the immediate family; a parent's mental illness, incarceration or military deployment; teen parent(s); homelessness; a low birth weight; and domestic violence.

About 30 percent of the families served by Blair Oaks' PAT program have a child, parent or both with a disability or ongoing health problem, and about half of families served by the district meet at least one high needs characteristic, Kerperin said.

The goals of the PAT program are to promote early childhood development, prevent child abuse and neglect, provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues, increase children's readiness for school, and build a head start of positive relationships between families and schools, according to DESE.

Kerperin said Blair Oaks covers about 60 percent of the cost for the PAT program in its district. The district there serves 117 children - which has grown from 40 when Kerperin started there, where she's been the PAT coordinator for 13 years.

She added, "That's about the average of school versus DESE across the state" in terms of the balance of responsibility for PAT budgets, at least among districts in the state such as Southern Boone County R-1 (Ashland), which Blair Oaks was comparable to in an informal evaluation by the district.

JCPS served 782 children from 531 families in the 2017-18 school year - with a total of 3,810 home visits.

The district served 1,361 families - or 2,168 children - with home visits over the past five program years since 2013-14, and completed 3,096 various health screenings.

JCPS paid for 57 percent ($370,005) of its program in the 2018 fiscal year. The state paid for $277,829 of the program's $647,835 cost.

A $5.4 million statewide PAT budget boost for the 2020 fiscal year that starts in July would be about a 30 percent increase to the current $18 million budget for 2019.

"The proposed budget has been sent to the governor, but we don't know what his recommendation will be. His budget should go to the legislature in January," said Nancy Bowles, DESE's communications coordinator.

The total requested increase for DESE's 2020 budget is $140.3 million - $135.7 million from Missouri's general revenue. Almost all of the increases are from a requested $77 million boost to the state's education equity formula and a $39.7 million increase for school transportation funding, along with $7.5 million for the Charter Public School Commission and $5.4 million for the state's Continuous Improvement System partnership between DESE's Learning Services Division and regional education centers.

It will not be clearer until Parson presents his budget to the Legislature how much, if any, increase Missouri's Parents as Teachers program might receive. But what is known is the PAT program in Missouri sustained massive budget cuts in the early part of the decade.

Bowles said the PAT budget in Missouri was approximately $34.3 million in the 2009 fiscal year - the year before cuts started.

In FY 2010, the budget was reduced to $30.8 million, and then to $13 million in FY 2011 - or 62 percent less than what it had been in 2009.

Epema said last year that the number of JCPS' full-time parent educators dropped from 22 to 12 since the budget cuts. The district now has 11 full-time and two part-time parent educators.

"Prior to the budget cuts, we were able to serve a lot more families," Epema said last year, adding wait lists for home visits developed after the budget cuts.

JCPS' PAT program serves the families of all children in the JCPS preschool program with homes visits, and expectant parents or any family with children of the right age that lives in the district may also enroll, though there is typically a waiting list for families who want home visits.

The wait list in the district is down to 24 families - "the shortest list we have had in several years" - after preschool program restructuring and families exiting the program because of their children aging out or moving reduced the number on the wait list from 142 families at the end of last school year.

JCPS said the time families spend on the wait list depends on whether families have high needs and what their availability during the day is. "There just isn't as much time in the evening between daycare/work and bedtime for home visits as during the day, so families who are only available in the evenings may wait a little longer for a parent educator."

However, enrolled families still have access to group connections with other parents; developmental, vision and hearing screenings; a drop in and play center located at the Southwest Early Childhood Center; and other resources.

Kerperin said Blair Oaks does not have a wait list. She added the Blair Oaks PAT program expanded this year from three part-time parent educators to two full-time and one part-time.

Statewide, 1,772 high needs families and 4,333 non-high needs families have requested but not received personal visits through PAT each year for the past four years, according to DESE's FY 2019 budget request to the governor's office.

"Now, more than ever, we need a strong and robustly-funded PAT system of services across our great state," Kerperin testified in January this year in front of the Missouri House Education Appropriations Committee, on behalf of the Missouri Parents as Teachers Association.

Families in the JCPS district who would like more information about the Parents as Teachers program or child development can contact Katie Epema at [email protected] or 573-659-2350. Families who would like to enroll in the program should contact the Southwest Early Childhood Center office at 659-3026 to request a form, or print the form available in English or Spanish at www.jcschools.us/Page/377 and drop it off or mail it to Parents as Teachers, 812 St. Mary's Blvd., Jefferson City, MO, 65109.

Families in the Blair Oaks district who would like more information or to enroll can visit blairoakspat.weebly.com/. Shauna Kerperin can be contacted at [email protected] or 573-636-2020.