LYNN – With the passing of H4227, the State has given Lynn’s Leading through Empowering Opportunities (LEO)’s Broad Street preschool $2.7 million. This is one of the largest education lines in the bill and ensures that LEO’s early years of operation at the renovated building will be without the weight of overwhelming debt.
In 60 years as a nonprofit, LEO has prepared more than 13,000 preschoolers for their educational journey through the Lynn schools. LEO is the largest early childhood education provider in Lynn, including Lynn Public Schools.
LEO ensures that children are “school ready” in the critical domains of early childhood education. This means they are in good physical and mental health and enthusiastic about learning. Each child in LEO’s preschool receives a range of assessments within 90 days of enrollment to develop an individualized learning plan as well as a comprehensive health and nutrition evaluation.
LEO’s 32,000-square-foot, ADA-compliant Early Education Center at 156 Broad Street has been open and operating since March. It has 15 classrooms, eight of which operate year round, that educate 270 children.
According to CEO Birgitta Damon, the $2.7 million will go toward paying off LEO’s construction loan.
“We have other grants, donors, (and) we had a capital campaign. We invested some of LEO’s own cash from previous real estate sales and some board designated funds, but we still had financing through Eastern Bank (for a) construction loan,” Damon said. “This enables us to pay down that debt, and it helps us with the funding gap that we had. It’s a huge relief to us.”
Damon added that she’s thankful for the State legislature for its support and for “seeing this vision along with us, enabling us to complete this project, and increasing the availability of preschool slots, early education, and care within the city and the critical services that we provide in the building.”
Damon specifically thanked Sen. Brendan Crighton, Rep. Daniel Cahill, Rep. Sean Reed, Rep. Jenny Armini and Rep. Donald Wong, saying, “They really led this effort to ensure that LEO received funding to complete the building.”
