ACCD News & Events

SPC to Collaborate with PCI, UTSA to Educate More Head Start Teachers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 18, 2005
CONTACT: Roland Ruiz, Director of Public Relations, St. Philip's College
210/531-4851
rruiz@accd.edu

St. Philip’s College will collaborate with Parent/Child Inc. (PCI) and the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) on a project aimed at educating more Head Start teachers in the area. Project Advance, as the new initiative is called, will serve as an academic model to increase the number of Head Start and Early Head Start teachers with bachelor’s degrees in reading and early education. The program will be funded by a five-year $728,235 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant, awarded recently to St. Philip’s College.

“This is a tremendous period of growth for us in early childhood education,” said Pamela Ray, director of the St. Philip’s College Early Childhood Studies Program. “The fact that we are celebrating our first graduates and also announcing Project Advance shows that as a college and a community we are making strides toward meeting the developmental needs of our children, and that’s good news for all of us.”

Through Project Advance, PCI Head Start and Early Head Start teachers will be recruited and retained to complete their coursework for an associate of Applied Science degree in Early Childhood Studies at St. Philip’s College, and then guided to transfer to and graduate from UTSA where they will earn the bachelor of Applied Arts and Science in Language and Literacy with an emphasis in Reading and Early Childhood Education.

Project Advance specifically addresses PCI’s need to increase the number of teachers with bachelor’s degrees in order to be in compliance with the proposed 2003 School Readiness Act, which will require 50 percent of all teachers employed by Head Start and Early Head Start programs to have a bachelor’s degree and the other 50 percent to have an associate’s degree. As the only Head Start and Early Head Start program in the San Antonio and Bexar County area, PCI serves approximately 7,000 children and employs 436 teachers. At present, 62 percent of PCI teachers are child development associate credentialed (not degreed), 12 percent have associate’s degrees, and 26 percent have bachelor’s degrees.

In its first year, Project Advance expects to engage project participants at two levels: 14 at the associate degree-seeking level who will attend St. Philip’s and then transfer to UTSA to complete their bachelor’s degree; and five at the bachelor’s degree-seeking level who will enroll at UTSA. By 2010, the program expects to have graduated 17 PCI teachers from UTSA with a BAAS degree in Language and Literacy with an emphasis in Reading and Early Childhood Education.

Graduates of the St. Philip’s Early Childhood Studies program are qualified for, but not be limited to, employment as a lead teacher of a Head Start center, director of a center, a program coordinator, or a trainer with Head Start. St. Philip’s College first offered a one-year Child Development Associate (CDA) certificate program in fall 2000 and then added a full-fledged Early Childhood Studies program offering an associate’s degree in spring 2002.

St. Philip’s College, one of the Alamo Community Colleges serving the greater Bexar County region, is a comprehensive community college designated as both a Historically Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.