This was a workday. The people in the room represented early care and education providers, administrators, parents, funders, the Agency of Education, legislators, and I am sure I am forgetting some other groups that were there. Governor Peter Shumlin stopped in to speak at lunch. He said, "If everyone can bring 10 of their neighbors, friends, colleagues to this discussion, we move this thing faster than marriage equality. We can move it faster than many other issues that have come before us. And I say that when Vermont gets this one right, the others will follow."
The work did not start on Tuesday. There were eight "Pre-Summit Sessions" held across the state with different topics that started in July. More than 700 people had input on the document, that is now in final draft form.
We spent summit day working in small groups, giving input to the document. In my group, we spent our first session just going around the table and giving our initial reactions to the Framework. Overall they were positive. The Framework seemed to provide meat to the shared Vision Statement that has been adopted by early childhood stakeholder groups, "To realize the promise of every Vermont child." The six goals outlined in the document are:
- Goal 1: A Healthy Start for All Children
- Goal 2: Families and Communities Play a Leading Role
- Goal 3: High-Quality Opportunities for All Children
- Goal 4: Invest Now for Our Future
- Goal 5: Know We’re Making a Difference
- Goal 6: An Innovative and Connected System
There were also some cautions and critiques from around the table. Is the document truly inclusive? I commented that I would like to see the picture on the front be more representaivel of all kids. While it is ethnically diverse, there are no babies, no kids with visible disabilities, and maybe there should be some parents with a stroller. A few folks in our group also took issue with the phrase that all children enter kindergarten, "ready to learn." We had a lot of agreement that kids are ready to learn, but we have to be ready to teach them with evidence-based and developmentally appropriate practice. I have always had push back when questioned by people if my transitioning preschoolers were ready for kindergarten. My typical response is, "Yes, they are 5 on September 1. That means they are ready." My real question back was, "Is kindergarten going to get ready for my rising preschoolers?"There was also some concern in our group that public school from K-12 was not well represented in the room. Given that the document does stress going up through Grade 3, we felt that there needed to be more involvement from the K-12 world to inform the document.
One really interesting idea that came out of our group, which would also effect the K-12 world, was to have a required high school course on parenting and being your child's first and lifelong teacher. It was echoed through all of our work sessions that this would be great. Another idea in a similar vein was to pair parenting and Le Mas courses together and make them more widely available to pregnant couples.
One other positive note from the day that I'd like to comment on was the voice of fathers. We started the morning listening to and asking questions a a panel of parents, three of whom were fathers. They talked about how Head Start programs and Fatherhood classes had been a source of support and growth for them as parents of young children. One father pleaded with the educators in the room to accept them as parents. He said that often fathers get lost in the mix. When educators call, they ask to speak to his wife, as if he is not there. He said that he wanted to acknowledged and to remember to leave a message for the dad. I took that message to heart. I am sure I am guilty of doing this in my past as a teacher. It is one of those societal prejudices that we do not always notice until someone throws it back at us. I heard that father, and I will not make that mistake in the future.
Moving forward, the next phases of working on Vermont's Early Childhood Framework is to finalize the document and then come up with an Action Plan to meet its goals. One of the themes of the day, emphaiszed by the governor in his speech, was to pass the Prekindergarten Education Bill (H270) in the Senate this upcoming legislative session. This bill will require school districts to offer publicly funded prekindergarten for all students who are 3 and 4 years old. Other areas Vermont will need to consider is building on the systems that we have in place, determining and assuring high quality programming from all early care and education providers, and figuring out how we will pay for all of this.
Governor Shumlin made a great point when he said that we currently pay about $54,000 a year to house prisoners in Vermont. If we were starting from scratch, would we let the problems of families fester until there children drop out of high school, get addicted to drugs, have children as teenagers and perpetuate those issues and spend the money after they are out of school in the corrections system? Or would we invest in families and children's well-being up front to alleviate those issues that are likely to come up later in life when kids do not get the fair start that they deserve? How do we want to proceed, Vermont?
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