State PIRC Board:

Gwendolyn Powell, Chair
Benita Martin
Cynthia Richards
Roxanne Setorie
Kathy Taylor
Mario Francis
Devon Francis

The Virgin Islands Parental Information and Resource Center grant is providing services to parents, community persons, school personnel and other interested persons who are committed to implementing The No Child Left Behind Act. The PIRC supports school personnel becoming knowledgeable, aware and informed of their roles, and the community in general being aware of the monumental challenges of implementing the No Child Left Behind Act.<>

The Goals for the 2006 grant are as follows:

1. To establish three (3) Parental Information and Resource Center Centers one on St. Croix, one on St. Thomas and one on St. John.
2. Provide workshops in PIRC locations in which 70 trainings/workshop sessions will be held per year on each island.
3. Provide technical assistance to 125 public school Teachers throughout the school year in determining the needs of parents and will help us in developing effective means for providing services to those
4. Provide a total of 65 families with children ages 0-5 with in home parental support using the Parents as Teacher Program an Internationally recognized and researched Early Childhood Program.
5. Provide four parenting forums open to the general public.

Major Activities
This grant also provides for PIRC centers to be set up and maintained in our offices, in schools, government agencies and housing communities. We will be a provider of informational and educational materials, tapes, CD’s, children’s materials, books, teaching resources all of which will be provided free to those we serve in our communities and other agencies.

How the Work Plan Meets the Needs of Parents
The PIRC/PAT centers and staff will be geared towards reaching and engaging disenfranchised parents who are often isolated from services, under educated, economically disadvantaged and a large percentage of whom are Limited English Proficient. Our services are available in English and Spanish and many of our written materials are also available in Spanish.

Unique Characteristics
Uniqueness of our program is that we provide workshops in English, Spanish and Creole and we keep the culture of the islands alive in our information and materials.