The Fannin County Recreation Department hopes to offer a Pre-Kindergarten class starting the Fall 2020 school year.
“With the after school program and the success we’ve had with that, we’ve had a lot of requests and inquiries about a Pre-K program,” Recreation Director Eddie O’Neal said during a Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday, Janaury 14. “We’ve talked to the school system. They actually have waiting lists. At the elementary schools … I think they take 22 at a time and then I think everything else goes on a waiting list. So we’re pretty confident we would fill up.”
O’Neal told the board that the program would cost approximately $54,000 stating, “It would be a $54,000 line item budget for us, which would pay for itself. So with the fees we would charge for the Pre-K program, what we’d like to do is take two existing, part-time employees and make those two people full-time.”
According to O’Neal, they will only start the program if they have enough interest with 15 students signed up, however at this time they do have all the required paperwork filed and approved by the state to start the program. They hope to have a three-year-old program and a four-year-old program.
Post One Commissioner Earl Johnson explained that the program was needed in the community stating, “There is a huge demand for it. We offer all kinds of services for kids five to teenage, so I think that will be a great service to offer some of the parents in the community.”
In other action, O’Neal requested and was approved to spend $10,780 for an engineered drawing by Biome Projects at Tom Boyd Park starting from the batting cages out to Field 5 to help fix the drainage issue. He was also approved to hire River City Athletics to laser grade and add top mix to three of the fields at a cost of $16,850.