Galesburg Bright Futures is celebrating 30 years in the Galesburg area with an open house on Thursday Feb. 18th.
From 5:30-7:30 p.m. the staff is inviting the community to reflect on the work the grant funded preschool for students at-risk or with special needs does and continues to do.
Cindy Barshinger who was with the program in the eighties and has been back for over a decade says the program has undergone many changes since the early days.
She tells WGIL that it used to be a program exclusively for four year olds.
“So now our classrooms are a mix of three and four year olds together, including children with special needs, so it’s a fully blended or integrated program,” Barshinger says.
Bright Futures operates with eight paraprofessionals and part of the proposed cuts in District 205 spending would be to eliminate ten district-wide paras.
Program Director Tammie Bolden doesn’t know how many of those would include Bright Future but she says these positions provide valuable assistance to students, doing everything from wrangling kids who run to changing diapers.
“So that would definitely change the dynamics of our classrooms,” Bolden says. “We want to be sure to support the children’s individual needs as well as provide them with a safe environment.”
Other possible Bright Futures cuts include the elimination of the parent coordinator and the district’s portion of program funding.
