St. Mary's Early Childhood Center
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Mission Statement
St. Mary’s Early Childhood Center offers two initiatives that are designed to impact school readiness and provide significant life-long positive outcomes: the Preschool Program and Professional Program.
About This Cause
Our Preschool Program addresses the issue of school readiness for disadvantaged preschool children in Indianapolis. St. Mary’s provides a licensed, nationally accredited full day preschool program that is ranked at Level 4 (the highest level) on Indiana’s quality rating scale. We served 144 children daily during the 2020-2021 school year. St. Mary’s focuses on nutrition and family engagement. In addition, we offer social work services and partner with an agency providing family counselling and play therapy for the child. Our goal is to not only impact our children but also their families. Since 2001, our work has been inspired by the world-renowned preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The Reggio Approach is based on the image of the child as strong, competent and capable. Children learn through investigations and projects. The work is also infused with experiences in the arts. We study the Reggio Philosophy and Applied Educational Neuroscience with Butler University’s College of Education. The program serves the following diverse group children annually in Marion County between our facilities (9230 Hawkins Rd and 901 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St.): Gender: 51% boys 49% girls Race: 20% Caucasian 34% African American 2% Asian 2% Two or more 42% Other Ethnicity: 59% Hispanic 41% Non-Hispanic No child has ever been denied services because the family can’t pay. 93% of our children live in poverty. St. Mary’s provides full scholarships of $10,000 per year for 56% of our children. These families are asked to pay $10.00 per week. Partial scholarships are provided for another 30% of the children. St. Mary’s Professional Development Program provides teacher training to early childhood educators, focusing on teachers who work with poor children. St. Mary’s has been positioned carefully to provide teacher training about best practices and the Reggio approach. We offer seminars, internships, consulting, study tours and a coaching model for more intensive professional development. St. Mary’s educators also present at state level conferences regularly. The staff at St. Mary’s is qualified and has studied the Reggio approach around the world as well as has been approved for site visits by American educators.