Missoula's Women's Opportunity and Resource Development Inc. (WORD), along with organizations in Bozeman, will share in the grant from the U.S. Department of Education to set up the Montana Parent Information and Resource Center Network.
The first installment of the grant is $409,522; the next three years will pay $450,000 per year.
Barbara Riley, project director for WORD's Family Basics program, said one-third of the grant money will be spent on the family resource center program in the Missoula County Public Schools District. The remainder of the money will be used to fund parental involvement programs in Bozeman and other parts of the state.
"Linking families and services is so important," Riley said. "This grant helps ensure that schools and nonprofits aren't working alone."
The family resource center program began in MCPS five years ago. Currently, the centers, each staffed by a family advocate, can be found in eight MCPS buildings - Roosevelt, Lowell, Franklin, Russell, C.S. Porter, Emma Dickinson, Hawthorne and Rattlesnake.
Riley said the centers were founded as a way to increase parental involvement in their children's education and to provide families with better access to school and community resources.
With the grant, Riley said she hopes other schools will be able to start their own centers. Money also will be available to improve services at existing centers.
Riley also said the money will be used to send family advocates into the homes of preschool-age youngsters, where they will work to improve "family literacy."
"The feds really want us to look at early childhood and readiness for school," Riley said. "We will use a lot of the money to train parents as teachers."
Through neighborhood schools, Riley said, family advocates will identify 3- to 5-year-olds who are not in an organized preschool environment.
"We will work with parents on skills that will get their children ready for school," Riley said. "In Montana we have a huge group of kids that don't go to preschool or child care."
Mary Vagner, MCPS superintendent, said the home visit program will be a benefit to students and parents.
Vagner said the district's family resource centers provide resource materials to parents and children and get families involved in neighborhood schools.
Riley said Missoula was chosen, along with Bozeman, as a lead center for the grant because of WORD's experience with parent education programs through the Family Basics project.
The grant will also allow Montana State University in Bozeman to set up a parent education program on seven Montana Indian reservations. Other projects funded with the money include state-wide training workshops for teachers and school administrators on involving parents at home and in school, a yearly statewide teleconference, and a statewide conference on school-linked services.