Two early intervention resource agencies for young children with developmental delays and disabilities at University of Memphis received three new grants from the state to support their work in the coming years, a recent announcement said.

When schools closed abruptly in 2020, derailing education for students across Memphis and the country, Jairia Cathey, a teacher at Evans Elementary, scrambled to provide virtual learning any way she could think of.Plummeting enrollment in MSCS early childhood programs during the pandemic left just a handful of students in her class. When classrooms reopened in the spring, the families of Cathey’s four students decided to keep them learning remotely. And by the time students returned to her classroom after 18 months of distance learning, the few students who came arrived with a severely disrupted preschool experience or having attended no school at all, at risk of falling behind academically, socially, and emotionally.