Sand Mountain Reporter

A program designed to help pregnant mothers and their children, up to age 3, is searching for a place to call home in Albertville.

The Early Head Start program is free for income-eligible families who are accepted, and it even includes meals for the children, diapers and other needs.

The Community Action Partnership of North Alabama received an Early Head Start expansion grant, which will allow them to put six new Early Head Start classrooms in north Alabama.

According to Michael Tubbs, of CAPNA, if the group does not find a suitable location within the next week then they will have to take the program someplace else because the classrooms have to open by May 1.

“Our problem is the more we try to chase down a classroom, the more dead ends we got,” Tubbs said.

“We had some wonderful churches and others, community folks and day-cares, that came forward but none of them were a fit for us.

“Either they were too big or they were too small.”

The group currently has a Head Start facility located on the property of Big Spring Lake Kindergarten, but the planned Early Head Start facility would be the first in Marshall County.

Tubbs said the participants in the Early Head Start program could transition into the Head Start program.

Tubbs said he believes Albertville should be one of the sites selected.

“We believe that it is right to put that classroom in this city,” Tubbs said. “We’ve done our demographic work. We’ve done our community assessment.”

The classroom will have eight openings available.

“We wrote a grant for 10 classrooms,” he said. “We ended up with six. We still believe Albertville was a target for us.”

Tubbs said the group is planning to spend money to renovate a suitable site and that once they move in they pay rent.

Tubbs said he wants to make an appeal to the community to find a location.

“We will pay our way. We pay rent. We pay utilities. We will do what needs to be done. We will put a playground in. We’ll spend the money to do it.”

Tubbs said the class had to be a minimum of 500 square feet, access to a storage area (not included in the 500 square feet), a restroom in or close to the room, along with a sink in the classroom.

The classroom also needs drain accessibility or plumbing.

Tubbs said the group would install a washer and dryer in the room.

The room also needs to be on a ground floor. Tubbs said it needed to have “direct access,” meaning it could not be in a basement or upstairs.

Outside the site also needed room for them to build a 1,500-square-foot playground.

Tubbs met with city leaders on Thursday, including two members from the council, a representative from BSLK and Assistant Superintendent Joyce Bishop.

He said this meeting did generate a few leads but he would still like to hear from the community.

For more information, contact Tubbs at 256-260-3201 or mtubbs@capna. org.

For more information about the Early Head Start program visit www.capna. org.

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Serving Albertville and the Sand Mountain region

Publisher: Ben Shurett

1603 Progress Drive
Albertville, Alabama 35950

Tel: 256-840-3000 | Email

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