The future of the T. K. Martin Center is in limbo

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Some children need extra help with speech, reading, even with walking and talking.

Most schools are not set up to provide intensive support for children in need.

So when the T.K. Martin Center opened on the campus of Mississippi State, it didn’t take long for parents to find it. Two and three times a week, they’ve come. Parents driving their children hours for therapy, for tutoring, and for hope.

That changed Monday night when social media posts and a phone chain spread the word, T.K. Martin is losing funding.

Raising a child with special needs can be an isolating life.

It is sticking to a routine, making sacrifices. It is taking joy in the small moments and being thankful for the big ones.

But if T. K. Martin loses funding, these mothers worry they will lose their community – and the hard-won progress of their children. Martha Ann Welch and Laura Whatley are moms who met at school.

Their children are among hundreds who go to Mississippi State’s T. K. Martin Center. They said the help their children receive is life-altering.

“You’re thrown into this whole world that you have no idea what to do next and how you’re going to accommodate your child. I heard about the T.K. Martin Center when we actually lived in Greenwood, and I heard about the T.K. Martin Center Project Impact. I really had no idea what they were going to do, but we applied, we got in, and I was like okay now what. So, my entire family moved to Starkville. When we came, Ellie couldn’t even sit up on her own, and by the end of that first school year she was sitting independently and taking steps,” said Whatley.

These mothers have found support and community with each other – and for their children.

Losing that help, they say, would be devastating.

“I kind of compared it to a head-on collision,” said Whatley.

“One of the big grants they had that funded a lot of the staff was or has been cut. As far as we know, those employees that help run the center and other employees that help with the communication devices that our children have, they will as of tomorrow I believe, go part-time and in then June they will no longer have a job,” said Welch.

The T.K. Martin Center operates on a patchwork quilt of grants – federal, state, and private donations.

“Like I’ve said we’ve been with the T.K. Martin Center since Emma was two so almost six years now, and every year it’s been trying to get the funding. We do fundraisers, and we’ve always known that there have been cuts. That’s just how our society works. There are budget cuts and places lose money,” said Welch.

For their children, life without T.K. Martin may step in the wrong direction.

“She is doing so well and thriving. Without the services I just hate to think about how she could regress because unfortunately with children they will regress if they’re not constantly getting that same routine getting structure and teaching that they receive there,” said Welch.

MSU Chief Communications Officer Sid Salter said senior university leadership met with the T.K. Martin Center Tuesday afternoon to begin developing a financial plan for the future for the center.

Salter said full-time staff will serve as they have, but some part-time workers will be impacted by the financial changes to the center before the end of the fiscal year on June 30th.

Salter said there is no intention by the university to close or substantially interrupt the services provided by T.K. Martin.

He said that preschool classes and Camp Jabber Jaw will continue as normal.

Salter also told WCBI it is normal practice to review budgets near the end of the fiscal year.