POULSBO — The North Kitsap School District has received a $200,000 Even Start grant that administrators think will be a boon for 30 local families.

The money, which is composed of federal funds, will be partially matched by the district, raising the total value of the grant to $325,000.

Abbie Pack, the district’s director of early childhood education, wrote the grant, and learned Dec. 14 that the district had received it.

He said the grant will help low-income families stay on pace with their education. The uniqueness of the grant, he said, is that it’s designed to benefit both students and their parents.

“It’s a program that helps families break out of poverty,” Pack said. The money will be focused, he said, on early childhood programs, such as Head Start; basic adult education, such as helping adults earn their high school diploma or learn job skills; parent training, in order to help adults, as Pack says, “be their child’s first teacher”; and interactive literacy training, which helps parents in their attempts to teach their children how to read.

Pack said the grant application was very specific: the district targeted 30 families it feels will most benefit from the money.

Those funds will not be used to create new programs, Pack said, but will instead strengthen existing ones, such as Head Start, the teen parent program, or the career and technical education program.

Several agencies which sometimes work separately will now be able to coordinate their efforts, said Pack; agencies such as the Port Gamble S’Klallam and Suquamish tribes, Kitsap Community Resources, and the Olympic Education Services District, which all work together to coordinate Head Start.

Now those agencies — and several others, including the Literacy Council of Kitsap County — will work together to strengthen those programs, Pack said.

Pack said that education for parents as well as students is essential to help families leave poverty — “It’s hard to get a job if you need training,” Pack said. And often, he added, a parent’s struggles to find work leads to a student struggling in school, or not getting the attention they need at home.

“These are children who would be at risk, or children that might struggle with academic progress in school,” Pack said. “but we’re going to build a foundation for their academic success.”