RALEIGH -- Wake County school leaders must decide whether to restore a popular counseling program that serves mostly middle-class families or gear the services toward low-income parents.
Facing a tight budget, school administrators have pushed a plan to turn Project Enlightenment's parent counseling services over to Wake County Human Services. They're arguing that, given the tight budget, the program shouldn't be serving families that can afford the counseling themselves.
But supporters of Project Enlightenment have lobbied the school board to keep counseling services at the early childhood program. A majority of school board members indicated Wednesday that they'd support restoring the counseling program to Project Enlightenment for at least a year.
"I think it would be a big mistake to discontinue a program that's really working well," school board member Dr. Anne McLaurin said.
No vote was taken Wednesday, but after the meeting with county commissioners the board members discussed putting it on a future agenda.
"I was encouraged," Charles Kronberg, former assistant director of Project Enlightenment, said after the meeting. "There's been a huge amount of public outcry because it's so successful."
As part of this year's budget cuts, the school board had agreed in April to lay off all nine of Project Enlightenment's parent counselors. These clinical social workers and psychologists provided advanced counseling services to children from birth through kindergarten.
Getting children ready
Founded in 1969, Project Enlightenment provides counseling, training and education services, many of them free or at low cost, to parents and child-care providers. Its goal is to help children get ready for kindergarten and beyond. Most of the cuts this year were made by eliminating the parent counseling section.
Amid lobbying from Project Enlightenment's supporters, school board members had asked staff last month to restore four or five of the counseling positions. But the plan presented by staff, and approved by the board, called for using $225,000 in savings to contract with the county for the counseling work.
"It's not our core mission to provide clinical level counseling to parents," said Marvin Connelly, assistant superintendent for student services. "That's why we turned it over to the county."
Noting that 51 percent of the families receiving the counseling from Project Enlightenment did not qualify as economically disadvantaged, Connelly said they're targeting the new program at families who are uninsured or underinsured. He said they'll refer parents with insurance to other options.
But school board members on both sides of the diversity-based assignment issue raised concerns Wednesday about the new plan, especially because it isn't up and running. The school system and Human Services haven't completed the details of the new contract.
"My fear is that we may see parents drop out of the program for lack of ability to pay," said school board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman, citing examples of parents with seemingly comprehensive insurance who could be devastated by co-payments.
County Commissioner Stan Norwalk said the school board needs to keep in mind how tough the budget situation is.
"I don't doubt there will be parents on the borderline who will be hurt by this," Norwalk said. "But there isn't enough money around or priority around to do it the way we used to."
