GREENVILLE — Angie Coby has been coordinator for Darke County Head Start program for eight years.
She answers to the Council on Rural Services, for whom she has worked for 20 years.
The wife of Shane Coby, superintendent of the Darke County Highway Garage, she holds an associate’s degree in early childhood education from Edison Community College, and a bachelor’s in education from Central State University. The 1994 Greenville High School graduate taught for 12 years in Troy for the Council on Rural Services.
“I always wanted to be a preschool teacher,” Coby said. “Then, there was an opening to advance and I got it.”
She oversees the Head Start programs in Union City and Bradford as well as the one in Greenville.
“And, I also have a home visitor in Preble County for early Head-Starters,” she said.
She said Head Start is a free program.
“We get federal dollars to run the program,” Coby said. “We provide breakfast, lunch and snacks. They (the families) have to meet our poverty guidelines — 130 percent poverty or below. We take children with disabilities and help service them as well.”
Most of the youth in the local programs have minor motor issues.
“We have 60 pre-schoolers, eight toddlers and four infants and a home base option, where the teacher goes into the home with educational activities,” she reported. “Two home aides serve 12 children each. It is a six-hour program and goes all year-round.”
One class begins at 6:30 a.m. and the other at 8:45 a.m.
“Each classroom has two teachers with a floater,” she said. “There are three preschool classrooms with eight teachers.”
The Cobys have two children of their own, Mason, who is in college at Purdue, and Ava, a fifth-grader at Tri-Village. The Head Start director is the daughter of Cheryl Hughes (widow of Eric Hughes) and Greg Petry.
