It was still summer, but a busy group of preschoolers bustled around the playground a few weeks ago at the SETA Head Start center in North Highlands. Preparing at-risk children for school is, after all, a year-round task.

And so Michelle Schultz's Jumpstart students from California State University, Sacramento, were on the job, as well.

"It makes a huge difference," she says.

Jumpstart, a national program founded in 1993, connects college students with their communities in a direct and quite touching way -- through these children of poverty, many from families who don't speak English, all in need of the individual attention of someone who'll take the time to read to them and help them learn.

Consider the experience of Jumpstart veteran Mindy Evans, 21, a CSUS senior liberal studies major.

"The first year, I worked with a little girl who really got me hooked on the program," she says. "She was 3 and spoke only Spanish, and she was very shy. She wouldn't speak in class. When we started working with her, she screamed and cried. She was so afraid.

"But as time went on, I'd walk into the classroom, and she'd run over. 'Miss Mindy! Miss Mindy!' Books were completely new to her, but she loved them.

"I saw a real progression in her, a real change. By the end of the year, she'd started participating in class."

Imagine that experience repeated child by child across America: Last year, Jumpstart served 4,500 children in 15 states, with 1,200 receiving one-on-one attention.

The need is huge. Studies show that up to half of American children from poor families start the first grade lacking basic preschool skills -- counting, knowing the alphabet and so forth -- which sets them up for a potential lifetime of academic failure.

And without education, life in America can hold the bleakest of prospects.

As Karin Ramirez, director of the North Highlands Head Start site, says: "A lot of these youngsters have issues, but they could easily get lost in the crowd. When Jumpstart takes them, the individual attention is wonderful for them."

When we met, Schultz, CSUS' Jumpstart site manager and a former Head Start parent herself, was concerned because, as one of the country's largest AmeriCorps programs, Jumpstart was on the brink of losing substantial federal funding.

Which meant that her program -- which last year included 65 CSUS students providing one-on-one tutoring to 65 low-income 3-to 5-year-olds as well as classroom help with 500 preschoolers at five of the local Head Start sites -- stood to be slashed.

Now that the fall semester has begun, Schultz is able to assess the damage that Jumpstart has sustained locally from the $100 million in funding cuts to the AmeriCorps program.

For now, plans have been scrapped to increase CSUS' pool of Jumpstart tutors and expand the program into several more of Sacramento's 32 Head Start sites. Instead, Schultz' AmeriCorps pool has been cut almost by half.

She's screening applicants for the 35 AmeriCorps-funded positions available and hoping that volunteers will bring the Jumpstart numbers up to last year's total.

Two-year Jumpstart veteran Mindy Evans, for example, has already received her full AmeriCorps educational stipend but is continuing with Jumpstart this year as a volunteer intern.

"Our Jumpstart members are so wonderful," says Schultz. "They're passionate about what they're doing.

"I'm a born optimist. I want to believe that good will come of our current situation."

She's making the best of things for now and hoping for a brighter future, with restored federal funding and more Jumpstart members to provide help for a greater number of Head Start youngsters.

Because, for some of these children, the future depends on it.