Lancaster Online: Op-ed: We need to invest in high-quality pre-K in Lancaster County
April 26, 2017 by Randy Patterson and Sue Suter
Lancaster County today is bursting with opportunities.
In one aspect, however, opportunities fall short. Too few children have the opportunity to attend high-quality prekindergarten, which helps prepare kids for success in school and in life. When they lack this essential opportunity, later opportunities for achievement may be out of reach, and our entire community suffers from their absence as productive citizens.
High-quality pre-K coincides with the critical years before age 5, when 90 percent of brain development occurs. By building strong neurological pathways and connectors, the brain prepares the foundation for a lifetime of learning, critical thinking and even socialization.
There’s a hitch, though. Proper brain development requires careful guidance. Carefully crafted, scientifically proven activities such as play and exposure to books help the brain grow healthy and strong. A lack of enrichment discourages the brain from growing to its full potential.
High-quality pre-K provides that enriching atmosphere, and research shows that it’s especially effective for children from lower-income families. Given nurturing experiences, these children enter kindergarten ready to learn, on par with their peers.
By investing in high-quality pre-K, we give kids a strong start, yielding returns that are both immediate and long lasting:
— High-quality pre-K reduces grade repetition and special education placements in later grades, saving resources that schools can spend on other, equally pressing needs.
— Children who benefit from high-quality pre-K are less likely to drop out of school and more likely to graduate and receive post-secondary education. This powerful combination boosts their employment opportunities and earning power, while also reducing the costs to society for social services.
— Every $1 spent in Pennsylvania on early learning such as high-quality pre-K generates an additional 79 cents in other sectors of the economy. Viewed from another perspective, every dollar invested in high-quality pre-K returns up to $17 in long-term savings and benefits.
Despite these proven returns, Pennsylvania’s investment in early learning is lagging. More than 112,900 eligible preschool children aren’t served by high-quality, publicly funded pre-K, even though they qualify.
That’s 64 percent of children ages 3 to 5 who probably aren’t getting the enrichment that boosts their prospects for lifetime success. Chances are, we will never benefit from their future contributions to our businesses and neighborhoods.
Throughout Pennsylvania, the unmet need is felt sharply in every community, whether rural, urban or suburban.
In Lancaster County alone, more than 78 percent of all eligible children in low-income families aren’t afforded the opportunity to attend publicly funded, high-quality pre-K classrooms. Consider the numbers within some local County school districts:
— Penn Manor School District, suburban: 84 percent, an estimated 494 kids.
— Solanco School District, rural: 95 percent, an estimated 768 kids.
— Elizabethtown Area School District, suburban: 90 percent, an estimated 278 kids.
— School District of Lancaster, urban: 55 percent, an estimated 1,015 kids.
These numbers are not unusual. More information about regional school district results can be found in Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children’s recent report, “A Path Forward,” at papartnerships.org/prekinpa.
The United Way of Lancaster County has established a “bold goal” that all children will enter kindergarten ready to learn by 2025. We are funding eight community impact partnerships striving toward that goal through increased access to quality early care, helping teen parents receive post-secondary education credentials, coordinating other wraparound services with early education, increasing the quality of home-based child care, and developing interactive activities that help parents understand their children’s brain development.
By investing in the critical need for high-quality pre-K education, United Way and our partners will create systems in our community to ensure that all Lancaster County children enter kindergarten ready to learn by 2025. However, there is much more work to be done to make this possible.
Public investments are needed to ensure a strong and well-financed child care system that serves as the foundation of effective pre-K delivery. By supporting substantial investments in high-quality pre-K, including the $75 million funding increase proposed by Gov. Tom Wolf in this year’s state budget, we give more children the chance to become productive citizens, ready to deploy their talents for the good of our community and businesses.
Randy Patterson chairs the United Way of Lancaster County board. Sue Suter is the organization’s president and CEO.
See the op-ed here.
Gant News: LTE: High-quality Pre-K Investments Needed to Prepare Children for Success
April 24, 2017
Dear Editor,
In Clearfield County, too many of our children aren’t getting the opportunity to attend high-quality pre-kindergarten. As a result, they fall short of their full potential.
High-quality Pre-K matters because it coincides with those years when the brain is busy building the connections and neurological pathways that will enable learning, critical thinking and other behaviors.
Research tells us that high-quality Pre-K is especially beneficial for children from low-income families, helping to put them at the same starting line as their peers by the time they start school.
By investing in high-quality Pre-K, we give kids a strong start, while yielding returns that are both immediate and long-lasting.
However, Pennsylvania’s investment in early learning is lagging. More than 112,900 eligible pre-school children aren’t served by high-quality, publicly-funded Pre-K, even though they qualify.
More than 45 percent of all eligible children living in low-income families in Clearfield County don’t have the opportunity to attend publicly-funded, high-quality Pre-k, including children in these school districts:
- Glendale School District: 100 percent of eligible children, or an estimated 86 kids.
- Dubois Area School District: 47 percent of eligible children, or an estimated 209 kids.
These findings aren’t unusual. You can learn more in Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children’s recently released report, “A Path Forward,” at www.papartnerships.org/prekinpa.
It’s time to close the opportunity gap. We need to make public investments that ensure a strong and well-financed child care system that serves as the foundation of effective Pre-K delivery.
By investing in high-quality Pre-K for all kids who need it, including the $75 million funding increase proposed by Gov. Tom Wolf for the upcoming fiscal year, we start building the foundation that assures children grow up into productive, self-sufficient citizens, contributing to our workforce and joining our community as good neighbors.
Sincerely,
Nancy M. Pinto, CPO
Clearfield Area United Way
Sharon Herald: Rep. Longietti Named a Pre-K Champion
April 22, 2017 by Joe Pinchot
SHARON – The numbers are stark.
In West Middlesex Area School District, 145 children are eligible for pre-kindergarten programs, but only 17 are enrolled, according to Pre-K for PA, a nonpartisan coalition lobbying for increased attention and funding for early childhood education.
In Mercer County, West Middlesex’s numbers are the norm. Other than the Hermitage and Farrell school districts, where all eligible students are enrolled in programs, more than half the 3- and 4-year-olds in every other county school district do not have access to an early education program.
As Pre-K for PA pushes to make Gov. Tom Wolf and state legislators make early education a priority, it has found a friend in state Rep. Mark Longietti, who serves the western portion of Mercer County.
Pre-K for PA honored Longietti on Friday with the Pre-K Champion Award, one of a handful of legislators so designated. These champions have “made this a priority issue,” said spokesman Kate Phillips.
“We need guys like Mark to push this forward,” she said.
Longietti is “the guy that (is) carrying the torch in Harrisburg on this issue,” said Ron DiNicola, co-chairman of the Northwest PA Leadership Council for Pre-K Counts, who presented the award to the Hermitage lawmaker.
“As I go around talking about pre-K myself, I’m always amazed at how impactful his contribution has been,” DiNicola said.
The award was handed out at Zion Education Center, the Sharon organization that has 30 children enrolled in its pre-kindergarten program, their enrollment fees paid totally or partly by a government organization.
“The parents in this community can’t afford to pay,” said Dr. April L. Torrence, who founded and operates the center, with Sharon school Superintendent Michael Calla adding that up to 70 percent of Sharon families are considered impoverished.
The lack of new funding is “very frustrating,” Torrence said.
“It is even more frustrating to know that we had a five-year gap before receiving grant funding to expand our classroom again,” she said. “It’s even more frustrating to know there are some parents that still have a portion of services that they have to pay for through co-payments, and they struggle with that. One of the hardest things that I have to do is cut off services because the parent has gotten behind in their co-payments.”
Children need to know their numbers and letters before they enter kindergarten, making pre-kindergarten programs critical to the long-term success of children in schools, said Jim Micsky, executive director of United Way of Mercer County, which runs the pre-kindergarten Success by Six program in the summer in 11 school districts.
“That’s where we set the groundwork for the future,” Micsky said of pre-kindergarten education.
The benefits of early childhood education are legion, speakers said. Students who are exposed to structured educational activities at ages 3 and 4 have more success in school and college, have higher earning potential, are less reliant on public assistance and have fewer problems with drug and alcohol abuse and crime.
Randy Seitz, president of Penn-Northwest Development Corp., said there’s no better way to lift a family out of poverty than to give an individual a job, and Penn-Northwest has pushed for school districts to become more active in economic development efforts. With “mass retirements” expected in the next 10 to 15 years, today’s young people need to be properly trained to step into those jobs, Seitz said.
Longietti said the importance of education was taught to him by his father, Al, and his mother, Pearl Knott, who went back to college in her 30s and got an education degree. She taught elementary school in Sharpsville for 22 years.
“She was very good as a student, very hard-working and it just ingrained in us the importance of education and then her role as an elementary teacher really spoke to how important it is to touch kids early,” he said.
“I think, if there’s any investment we can make in state government, that this is the most important investment because children are our future, number one,” Longietti said. “Number two, all the peer-reviewed studies show that for every dollar that we put into early childhood ed, that we save between $7 and $17” in future services provided to individuals.
But, it’s hard to shake free new funding for early education programs.
“It’s always the same thing,” Longietti said. “We’re always piecing these budgets together, trying to scrape together the funds to get through another year. Too often, we don’t make the investment in our future that pays dividends down the road because we’re just trying to get by. This is an investment we can’t afford not to make. Other states are doing it, other countries are doing it, we need to do it here in Pennsylvania.”
Longietti said he accepted the Pre-K Champion award on behalf of “the kids that we have reached and made a difference for”; “the kids that we need to reach”; and “perhaps, most importantly, because my mother was an early educator, I accept it on behalf of the teachers, the folks that come here every day and teach and form young minds.”
See the full article here.
WXBN: Group Says Mercer County Kids Lack Access to Quality Early Education
April 21, 2017 by Gerry Ricciutti
MERCER COUNTY, Pa. (WKBN) – One group says more funding is needed to ensure that all children have access to early-childhood education.
According to Pre-K for PA, 57 percent of the eligible 3- and 4-year-olds in Mercer County have no access to high-quality early education.
“That’s a pretty substantial number of children who are starting in kindergarten classrooms with very little in the way of learning the alphabet, their numbers or just their social skills,” said Jim Micsky, executive director of the United Way of Mercer County.
The group is asking for more funding from the state because not all families can afford to pay for such programs. Leaders are asking Governor Tom Wolf to provide an additional $75 million for early childhood education — enough to cover 8,400 more children across the state.
Dr. April Torrence, of the Zion Education Center, started working in early child development in 1995 when she started an in-home daycare operation. With 70 percent of the families in Sharon living in poverty, she said funding from the state to pay for programs like this is crucial.
“Because families in this community are poverty-stricken, they don’t have the resources to pay for high-quality child care, so to have the funding here in the community is a plus,” said Torrence.
She said Zion Education Center lost 95 percent of its state funding in 2011, forcing them to eliminate seven staff members and 25 pre-K slots. Zion now receives funding to pay for 15 children.
If Wolf’s budget proposal is approved, the additional money would allow the facility to enroll more students.
“We want to reach as many families as we can, especially within walking distance, to come to the facility and receive a high-quality education,” Torrence said.
Zion Education Center in Sharon is one of 19 certified high-quality pre-K education programs in Mercer County. Pre-K for PA said 31 more classrooms like that are needed for the kids with no other access.
Read the article and view the video here.
