ELYRIA — Chante Crenshaw dreams of a better life for herself and her three children.

She’ll start classes next week to become a dental assistant and works part time as a home health aide. She depends on free day care to be able to improve her standing, but after Aug. 22, she might have to quit school and her job to stay home and watch her kids full time.

Gov. Ted Strickland’s new budget proposal would eliminate the Education Learning Initiative (ELI) program that provides the majority of funding to the Horizon Activities Center in the Wilkes Villa public housing complex and the Horizon Activities Center off 14th Street in Central Lorain, as well as preschool programs across the state.

The ELI program prepares low-income 3- to 5-year-olds for kindergarten, utilizing low teacher-to-student ratios and a requirement that teachers have at least an associate’s degree.

If the state legislature approves the cuts to plug a $1 billion hole in the state’s budget, ELI would be eliminated Aug. 22, as would the day care/preschool program at Wilkes Villa and the entire Central Lorain branch, which would shut its doors and lay off about 35 people, the majority of whom would be teachers.

Losing the ELI program also means a loss of $3.5 million to North Olmsted-based Horizon Activities Centers, the umbrella organization that operates six centers in Elyria, Lorain and North Olmsted. The loss is half of the non-profit organization’s $7 million operating budget.

“How can I go to school to better myself if I don’t have child care?” said Crenshaw, 31, whose 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter attend the Wilkes Villa Horizon Center. “They want us to be self-sufficient, but how can that be? I don’t have family I can rely on, and I don’t have anyone who I can say, ‘Hey can you watch my children while I go to school or work.’ ”

About 50 children benefit from the ELI program at the Wilkes Villa site. If their parents qualify for subsidized child care through Lorain County Department of Job and Family Services, they will still be able attend the Horizon Activities Center on Dewhurst Road, but they must have full-time jobs or be in a training program and be able to transport the children to the facility, located about 2½ miles from Wilkes Villa.

“These children are in poverty, children without choices. These families don’t have cars,” said Pat Duesenberry, director of the Horizon Activities Center where Crenshaw’s children attend. “These kids at Wilkes Villa have nothing else. They have no ability to have anything else. Some people think, ‘Well if the parents don’t go to work or school, why should they get preschool,’ but this program works.”

Children who benefit from the ELI program tend to score higher on an aptitude test given to those entering kindergarten, called the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment — Literacy test, or KRA-L, according to Dave Smith, executive director of Horizon Activities Centers, the umbrella organization based in North Olmsted that oversees all five centers in Elyria and Lorain.

“Basically when you look at kids out of the ELI programs, they’re scoring about 20 percent higher when compared to the average kid going to an Elyria kindergarten,” Smith said.

Smith said ELI has been so effective because it focuses on the child’s needs and not what their parents should be required to do in order to receive benefits.

“ELI is unique because there isn’t a work requirement,” he said. “One of the problems with what is going to happen is that the governor’s plan is to transition to subsidized child care, but with that program funding is only offered for kids while their parents are at work or training. They won’t be eligible if they work evenings or attend school at night.”

Smith said parents of 83 of the 331 children who benefited from ELI fall under that category and won’t be able to take part in subsidized child care.

In Lorain, parents of children who received funding from ELI will also have to qualify for subsidized child care and find transportation to one of the other centers in east or south Lorain. Since ELI only affects children ages 3 to 5, those ages 18 months to 12 years of age who attended the Central Lorain site will not be transitioned to another site, Smith said.

Wilkes Villa also will continue its afterschool tutoring and Head Start programs for those children and will be partnering with Lorain County Community Action Agency to offer half-day day care four days a week.

Smith said there’s still a chance ELI won’t be cut when Strickland’s budget is finalized, but it doesn’t look good.

“We’re still hoping for a miracle,” he said.

Contact Adam Wright at 329-7129 or awright@chroniclet.com.

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