County Gets First Tobacco-Tax School Grants

In a case of the early administrator getting the worm, six Orange County school districts will share $2.8 million in Proposition 10 grants under a state program designed to improve early childhood education.

Orange County is the first to receive money under the new $200-million, four-year program because it was the only county to apply during the first phase in October, officials said. A second round of applications are due in January and another in May.

The money, which comes from the Proposition 10 cigarette tax, will underwrite a wide range of local pilot programs designed to prepare youngsters who will enter kindergarten in low-performing schools, officials said.

In Orange County, the funded programs range from health screening and other services in the Capistrano Unified School District--$260,000--to establishing readiness programs within the Santa Ana Unified School District’s Pio Pico Elementary School and a related outreach program at a nearby overcrowded apartment complex, totaling $899,000.

“It’s so they’ll be ready to succeed in school and will have the foundations that they need to thrive in that environment,” said Nicole Kasabian, spokeswoman for the California Children and Families Commission.

The state commission, and its counterparts at the county level, were established after Proposition 10 passed in 1998. Their task is to distribute money raised by a 50-cent-a-pack cigarette tax and additional revenue from the 1998 tobacco settlement.

The focus is on programs that promote early childhood development, from prenatal to age 5.

Officials said Orange County’s commission was ready to move before other counties simply because it had already identified school-readiness as a priority.

“Orange County had started along the path well over a year ago,” said Roberta Peck, education consultant for the state commission. “They had already done some strategies, such as funding a school-readiness coordinator for all the districts. When this focus came along in the summer, they were ready.”

Peck said she expects more applications for other counties--and a fresh round of Orange County applications--to be filed by the next deadline, Jan. 15.

Mike Ruane, executive director of the Orange County commission, said the pilot programs all seek to find new ways to help disadvantaged youths do well early in their education.

Key to that, he said, is being ready to start school.

“The children have to be ready for schools and the schools have to be ready for the children,” he said.

Garden Grove plans to use $400,000 to pay for its new Parent Resource Center at Clinton-Mendenhall Elementary School, serving families of students there and at nearby Skylark Elementary, where 90% of the students are learning English and 95% qualify for subsidized meals, said district spokesman Alan Trudell.

The center, which is also supported by $60,000 from the Boys and Girls Club of Garden Grove, will offer health screening, parenting and English-language classes, and a small lending library.

Trudell said the district already intended to open the resource center, so the state grant frees district money for other projects.

“The goals of the program--getting healthy families and healthy children and having children ready for kindergarten--are priorities,” Trudell said. “The grant is a big boost.”

Ruane said the grants also would:

* Establish evening classes in parenting skills, school readiness and other services at overcrowded schools in Anaheim, part of a $440,000 award.

* Integrate health and preventive health services at Oak View Elementary School in Huntington Beach’s Ocean View School District, including establishing a family resource center and occupational training for parents, part of a $320,000 award.

* Expand health access and establish a center for teachers and families in the Newport-Mesa school district, part of a $495,000 award.