Local foundations aid in preschool funding opportunities

Karly Graham, The Petoskey News-Review
·2 min read

NORTHERN MICHIGAN — This fall, different scholarships will be made available to Northern Michigan families for preschool, following different grants received by the Great Start Collaborative.

Great Start Collaborative received $10,000 from the Charlevoix County Community Foundation and $9,300 from the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation.

Northern Michigan families may be eligible for preschool tuition help through the Great Start Collaborative.
Northern Michigan families may be eligible for preschool tuition help through the Great Start Collaborative.

The funding will go to the Great Start Preschool Scholarship Fund, which helps contribute to the preschool tuitions of children ages 3-5 years old with families that are living at 250 percent or below poverty levels, while accounting for things like development delays and single-parent households, according to a release from the Char-Em ISD.

Recent funding provided by the Charlevoix County Community Foundation and the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation will go to the Great Start Preschool Scholarship Fund.
Recent funding provided by the Charlevoix County Community Foundation and the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation will go to the Great Start Preschool Scholarship Fund.

“Having access to high-quality preschool is a key factor impacting a child’s school readiness,” Savanah Cool, Great Start Collaborative director, said in the release. “While there are income-based programs in our communities — Great Start Readiness Program and Head Start, specifically — there is not enough capacity in those programs to serve every child that would qualify. These scholarships remove financial barriers for families to be able to enroll their children in available tuition-based preschool programs.”

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Local preschoolers will be eligible to receive scholarship funding for preschool tuitions through the Great Start Collaborative.
Local preschoolers will be eligible to receive scholarship funding for preschool tuitions through the Great Start Collaborative.

Scholarships from the Great Start Preschool Scholarship Funds provide up to 100 percent tuition assistance for high-quality preschool programs.

The funding was granted by the Charlevoix County Community Foundation through the Community Priorities grant cycle. Funding from the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Community Foundation came from the Birchwood Outreach Fund, Circuit Controls Corp. Charitable Fund, Ted and Brenda Frey Donor Advised Fund and the Boeckman Family Fund, which provided $7,000, $1,000, $800 and $500, respectively.

People interested in donating to the scholarship fund may do so by reaching out to Cool at cools@charemisd.org.

— Contact reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN. 

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Local foundations aid in Northern Michigan preschool tuition assistance opportunities