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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > September > 17 > Entry
Finding money to make pre-school better
Last week I wrote about an effort to expand access to and information about pre-school in Montgomery County. Percy Mack described to Dayton city commissioners how just $400,000 in spending could bring $2.8 million in state and federal grants. Mack said probably more like $5 million a year needs to be spent to improve pre-school to reduce the huge numbers of kids who come to kindergarten not ready for school.
My big question at the time was, where will the money come from? Well, I got a partial answer Friday.
It turns out the county’s Family and Children First Council already has put up the initial $420,000 (funded with money from the human services levy) to hire a small staff to begin seeking and administering grants for pre-school over the next 16 months. With this group in place, the county should soon be able to access the $2.8 million in annual state and federal aid that’s available through 2010.
Jenni Roer from the Tait Foundation, which has matched $50,000 to the effort, said the hope is that this can help the county grab even more federal and state grants, as well as go after large foundations for additional aid. The idea is not to hit up governments for money, she said. That’s good since the city and school district are too strapped to put up any cash.
Here are the stated goals of this effort:
• Ensuring more early learning professionals are highly qualified
• Making high-quality early learning available to more children
• Supporting parents and families in promoting their children’s early social, emotional, physical and academic development
• Accessing state, federal and private funding to maintain a quality system of early care and education
As a parent of three young children, I can tell you this — quality pre-school is not cheap. One issue that is yet to be addressed is how to make good pre-school affordable to low income families, but Roer said there are good strategies to address that once the first steps of this new countywide pre-school structure is in place.
For now, the effort will focus on its goals of providing professional development and technical assistance to existing pre-schools, coordinating resources and helping families learn about and access quality care and education services.
I’ll be meeting with these folks next week and they are just getting off the ground, so I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about their plans soon.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Young Children
Comments
By Concerned Mom of 3
September 17, 2007 10:18 PM | Link to this
I have found two really awesome pre-school programs already in place in Dayton: First, the 6 + 6 inclusion “non-categorical” pre-school program is fabulous. Six children in the class have identified special needs, and six children are typically developing pre-schoolers. (All of my children participated in this program.) Second, there is no better pre-school program than the 3,4, and 5 year old Montessori kindergarten class. The practical life lessons are interesting, and they allow the chilren to make mistakes and self-correct them. The children benefit from hands-on lessons that have to do with proper handwashing, water pouring, and 1 to 1 correspondence. The students learn to take responsibility for maintaining a peaceful classroom environment. They learn skills that help them explore a variety of ways to solve problems. These are two very successful programs already in existance in the Dayton distict. Has anyone looked into expanding these programs? No sense in re-inventing the wheel.By sdswith5
September 17, 2007 8:18 PM | Link to this
Years ago the lottery people dangled a “funding education” carrot in front of us to get a lottery to pass. Sure would be nice to see some of THAT money go toward preschool funding…or ANY actual education funding for that matter!By Mary
September 17, 2007 6:23 PM | Link to this
When I was growing up in the 50s, the USSR’s communistic system was commonly criticized for having young children in preschools while their moms/comrades had to work to support the communistic system. I am not saying this is good or bad, but it is odd how these things happen. Now, our government is doing the same thing for which we criticized the USSR over 50 years ago.