A big new federal grant will help local agencies better teach young children to read.

Children's Learning Center teacher Gloria Riley helps out, from left, Valdez White, 3, Jillian Wilson, 4, and Jeana Devine, 4, as the trio colors with stencils Thursday afternoon. The center is part of a coalition of local agencies that has received an 53,605 grant to improve early-childhood literacy education.

Success By 6 Coalition of Douglas County and the Douglas County Child Development Assn. on Thursday announced they had received an $853,605 grant to help a coalition of agencies develop literacy programs.

“I think it’s mainly going to improve the quality and availability” of early childhood programs in Lawrence, said Rich Minder, coordinator for Success By 6.

The grant, provided through the federal Department of Health and Human Services, will pay for a project called “Program for Partnerships in Early Learning.”

The project brings together seven early-learning programs in Lawrence and Baldwin and trains their workers to develop literacy programs for preschool children – with special attention to “special needs” children younger than 3.

“It’s some specific training we haven’t always had access to,” said Holly Turner, executive director of Children’s Learning Center, 205 N. Mich. “I was so excited when I heard of this. I think all of us were.”

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The seven agencies employ 40 early-childhood teachers overseeing the education of 424 preschoolers across Douglas County.

The agencies used $150,000 of donations and state-sponsored “Smart Start” money to match the grant.

The grant is expected to provide training to the teachers through February 2007. By that time, Minder said, the training will be ingrained at each agency and passed on to future educators.

“It will make all those programs more enriching for small children,” he said, “and those results will carry on.”