Recognition also went to, from left, Meg Sneed, preschool director; Nelda Fortune Crawford, assistant superintendent for the Lampasas Independent School District; Ann McCain and Larry Kotch, sponsors for the Texas School Ready program through the Texas Workforce Commission; and Melissa McNulty, TEEM coach. Children’s Learning Institute and Workforce Solutions of Central Texas have announced Lampasas community recipients of Texas School Ready certification.

Recognition went to Kline Whitis Elementary, Lampasas Head Start, First Baptist Church Preschool, San Saba Head Start, Hamilton Head Start and Gatesville Head Start. Each has earned Texas School Ready Certification for 2009.

To achieve certification, teachers at preschools and centers apply to CLI and provide information about their classrooms. CLI then studies information provided by Texas public school districts to assess those students’ early reading and social development skills after they advance to kindergarten.

Annual certification demonstrates that children who graduate from recognized preschool classrooms went to public kindergarten with the fundamental skills in place to be successful.

“This certification recognizes the strong leadership of local community leaders in implementing the Texas School Ready Project and in taking a proven, focused approach to ensure that all children, including those at-risk, receive the support they need to enter school ready to learn,” said Susan Landry, PhD., Albert and Margaret Alkek Endowed chair in Early Childhood Education and executive director of CLI at the UT Health Science Center.

“This project continues to succeed for children because of the support of our elected and appointed leaders in Austin,” she said.

The success of this model is ex- emplified across the board in our communities, said Meg Sneed, First Baptist Church Preschool director.

Kline Whitis has three Title I prekindergarten classes taught by LISD teachers, while the other programs have been involved in the project using the same stateadopted curriculum for instruction, utilizing the same progressmonitoring tool, and attending the same professional development courses.