The Southeast Kansas Community Action Program will give area youngsters a better head start on their educations starting next school year.
Steve Lohr, SEK-CAP executive director, told Allen County commissioners Tuesday a new 3,600-square-foot Early Learning Center at 525 Kennedy Ave. — on the east edge of Iola — was progressing well. The structure, costing $500,000, is being constructed by “one of your local contractors, Hofer & Hofer of Humboldt,” he said.
More than half of the funding, $279,000, is from leftover federal stimulus money designated for early childhood learning. Lohr said permission was obtained to use it for the construction project. The remainder of funding is through a loan from Girard National Bank.
When it opens this summer, the center will serve up to 55 children on site, including younger children who had been served in a home-based program. This year 93 children were involved in early learning services; some will remain in home-based programs after the center opens. The Head Start Center at Broadway and Sycamore streets will close this summer.
The center also will mean an increase in SEK-CAP employment in Iola.
“We have seven employees currently in Iola and will add five with the new center,” Lohr said.
He also told commissioners that funding cuts in Washington and Topeka could affect the services that SEK-CAP provides, including transportation of the elderly, which has more of a presence in other counties. Allen County has its own elderly van, which serves Iola, Humboldt and Moran on a varying schedule five days a week.
SEK-CAP transports Allen Countians occasionally, but it is more a feature elsewhere in southeast Kansas.
SEK-CAP’s mission is elimination of poverty in 12 counties of southeast Kansas.
“That we’ve been around for 45 years isn’t a good thing,” Lohr said, since poverty still is very much a part of the area’s economic climate.
The character of the overall program has changed over the years, Lohr added, noting that such things as deliveries of commodities to the poor have given way to more intensive efforts to deal directly with families, including provision of housing and rental assistance.
SEK-CAP has built five houses in Iola, in the vicinity of where the Early Learning Center is being constructed.
He said 29 Allen County families were living in safe, affordable housing because of SEK-CAP’s efforts. Ten families are being helped to attain self-sufficiency through intensive case management.
A federal stimulus grant permitted SEK-CAP to reach out to organizations and local governments to help provide services that benefited communities as well as low-income families in 2010.
Elm Creek Community Garden, on South First Street in Iola, received $28,445.58; $4,713.50 went to the Savonburg Public Library; another $1,115.94 purchased passes for Moran youngsters to swim weekly in Iola’s Municipal Swimming Pool.
THE ORGANIZATION has a staff of 240 in the 12 counties it serves and has 26 job openings today.
“It’s a challenge to find qualified staff,” Lohr said, pointing out that many of the jobs require more than basic skills.
A decided disadvantage, he noted, is that if funding falls short some employees will have to be laid off and when the economy turns around rebooting SEK-CAP’s ranks will be a chore.
An example, he said, is a crew hired and trained in making over homes to improve their energy efficiencies, including such things as installation of insulation.
“If we have to lay off those workers, who are very skilled in what they do, it would hard to find people skilled enough to start the program back up when funding again is available,” he said.
