Gettin to Know My International contacts. Part 2

My international professional contacts have been very helpful. This week, my Hawaii contact has responded but I suspect my Nigerian contact is unable to attend to her messages because unlike her, I still have no response from Stella. 

 

These are some of Jeannie's view from Hawaii:

The greatest challenge facing early education in Jeannie's area is funding.  There is a great need to raise public awareness of how quality early learning services and programs can make a difference for young children, especially those at-risk, their families, and their communities and I could not agree with you more

Another step is providing information to parents and the political, business, and civic leaders across my state regarding funding and early education to encourage them to make informed decisions in support of children especially the way we invest our public resources. 

Here are some current statistics

ONLY 1 out of 5 kindergarten classes have the majority of their students entering school with essential reading and math skills.

LESS THAN ½ of Hawai‘i’s public school kindergarten students attend preschool before starting school (2011).

A child is born into poverty every 5 hours.

1 out of 3 children are not reading at 3rd grade level.

A child is abused or neglected every 4 hours.

A child dies before his or her 1st birthday every 3 days.

We can do better with spending

Every $1 spent on quality early childhood services in Hawai‘i produces $4.20 return on investment in reduced spending on social welfare services.

Early identification of special needs can save schools more than 50% per child, saving taxpayer dollars.

Where tax dollars are currently spent

Hawai‘i currently dedicates less than 3% of its resources to young children and their families.

The state spends almost $40,000 on prisoners, just over $11,000 on children in school and much less for children under the age of five.

Overall, I feel that funding can further support early childhood in developing well qualified teachers, compensating well qualified teachers who are then capable of meeting standards through developmentally appropriate practices.  Funding further supports the school readiness gap through support of infrastructure.  Here locally many families opt out of paying for preschool as they cannot afford it and instead elect to have family members care for their children.  Child care subsidies are available in my state however you must qualify by income and must be employed.  Many who do not have jobs find it hard to find gainful employment without guaranteed childcare.  Also, as your pay increase you risk losing childcare and therefore, eventually you could lose your job for lack of childcare.  So , many young children are being cared for by grandparents here.  Head Start provides free half day preschool programs for those families who qualify.  Again, middle income families do not qualify and with the high cost of living here often times find themselves sacrificing preschool for rent or car payment.

My Views:  

 More money is put into prisons than into schools. We are going to build a lot more prisons if we do not deal with the schools and their inequalities.  —Jonathan Kozol, American educator and activist

It is so sad that children who ought to be our pride and hope are this marginalized.

I would vote for more children and raise my voice to speak on their behalf as much as lies in my power.  The field needs to enlighten the professionals on how to do advocacy with results.

I used to think that poverty was a third world's business. Right now, I see that collectively we need to fight poverty because it is the remote cause of eery inequity.