The First Steps To School Readiness State Director Susan DeVenny spoke at the local First Steps Board annual meeting last week. Here are her remarks:
Good evening, elected officials, board members, staff and community leaders, advocates for children across Dillon County. It is my privilege to be here with you this evening, celebrating your successes in supporting our youngest learners, their families, teachers, and caregivers.
Congratulations to the new First Steps partnership board members and officers elected here this evening. You are joining a powerful group of leaders statewide whose only job is to get up every day and create early learning experiences in the community you serve so that our children arrive at school healthy and ready to succeed. We know that it takes ALL of us, collaborating together and working hard in partnership for our youngest learners, to achieve the audacious vision of First Steps: Every South Carolina child will be prepared for success in school.
Tonight, I want to talk about both where we have been and about where we are going at First Steps. I’d also like to commend you for your leadership for children and lift up the powerful example you have set through your service to the community.
As you may know, South Carolina was the third state in the nation to create an early learning infrastructure to help families prepare their children for school success. We followed North Carolina Smart Start, created in 1993, and California’s First 5, created in 1998. Passed in June 1999, South Carolina First Steps to School Readiness has five bold legislative goals, which bear repeating tonight and have not changed since inception:
“The goals of First Steps to School Readiness are to:
(1) provide parents with access to the support they might seek and want to strengthen their families and to promote the optimal development of their preschool children;
(2) increase comprehensive services so children have reduced risk for major physical, developmental, and learning problems;
(3) promote high quality preschool programs that provide a healthy environment that will promote normal growth and development;
(4) provide services so all children receive the protection, nutrition, and health care needed to thrive in the early years of life so they arrive at school ready to succeed; and
(5) mobilize communities to focus efforts on providing enhanced services to support families and their young children so as to enable every child to reach school healthy and ready to succeed.”
-Section 59-152-30 (1999, 2006, 2013, 2014)
Lawmakers in 1999 recognized that meaningful school readiness progress would require the same innovative spirit that powers advances in the private sector, therefore established First Steps as a public-private partnership, with a mandate to create a network of interconnected local partnerships statewide. State and local First Steps boards are leaders for children from both public and private sectors, committed to improving outcomes for South Carolina’s youngest learners. Because no two communities are the same, each local First Steps board operates under common bylaws, with the same mission, vision, and goals, but has responsibility to develop programs and services that meet the unique needs of families and children locally. The First Steps network of 46 local partnerships (guided by an interagency, public-private board at the state level) is an important mechanism to achieve South Carolina’s school readiness priorities.
Here is an example of what I mean.
In 2006, lawmakers responded to the Abbeville lawsuit by reauthorizing First Steps and by expanding four year old kindergarten access for children in a wide array of settings –public schools, Head Start programs, faith settings and private child care centers. South Carolina’s public-private 4K partnership does two things very well. First, the program meets the needs of families by increasing preschool availability across our state. Second, the program saves taxpayer dollars by leveraging the quality early childhood infrastructure that already exists in our communities. This is smart investing – South Carolina is a national model among states expanding prekindergarten. First Steps and the Department of Education, along with local preschools, are all collaborating together to make this program a success for children. Here in Dillon, partners like Dillon County Schools, Little Treasures, Kids Limited, and Mother’s Love child care partners are teaming up to expand access for children. Your own 4k teacher, Brenda McRae, was recently honored at the state level for her tenacity to ensure that every child is supported to reach her full potential. That is what it takes to bring the best possible results: public-private collaboration, personal leadership and over-the-top devotion with a common goal of school readiness.
Here in Dillon County, you have focused extensively on supporting and strengthening the child care partners who serve our children while their parents are at work. You know well that 68% of all SC parents with children under age 6 go to work each day, leaving their children in the care of others during the early years when brains are developing rapidly. This year, you provided extensive child care training and mentoring to teachers in 22 programs impacting over 300 children in child care every day. You’ve also supplied books to area child care centers to assist them in creating literacy-rich learning environments to children in their care. This collaboration allows you to touch teachers and families, providing high-quality professional development to those caregivers who are inspiring our babies to learn through play and who are partnering with parents to help children be ready for school success. We MUST all take note of the powerful child care partnership collaboration story here in Dillon and work together with our private, faith- and community-based preschools to be sure ALL teachers have the benefit of training and advanced education.
What you also know in Dillon County is that parents are their child’s first and best teachers- one of the hallmarks and values of First Steps since inception. In a broad public survey done by First Steps and ETV in 2012, 58% of respondents reported a “lack of understanding of the importance of early childhood development and parenting” as a top barrier to school readiness and educational achievement in communities statewide. Our May 2015 survey, “How Are the Children?” yielded two overarching hopes for South Carolina’s children:
-The need to find more and new ways to support parents of young children;
-The need for increased access to high quality child care.
Here in Dillon, you already know this.
With an evidence-based program called Parents as Teachers, you have in one year alone offered 735 hours of intensive in-home visitation impacting 21 families, working with families on unique strategies to help their children thrive and learn. Over 1100 books were provided to families, connections made to other local services, and early delays noted in a few cases where children were referred for extra help. On two national metrics, both families and children made significant improvement due to your hard work. We are asking the General Assembly for additional resources to support these effective programs.
So. Where are we headed? Following our recent reauthorization in 2014, the state board has set forth a path of renewed engagement with ALL of our partners. We stand ready to strengthen the local partnerships and assist them in reaching families with services needed to help their children prepare for school success. Our data are leading us to focus more heavily in the areas of teacher training and leadership development, parent engagement and mentoring, child care access and quality improvement, assessment and identification of developmental needs early rather than later. We have a new definition of school readiness -for the first time ever- inside of our reauthorization bill. Together with our partners at the Department of Education, we have adopted a family and community-friendly profile of the ready learner to share statewide. We are launching a new school readiness public information campaign at our Early Childhood Summit next week. Our new strategic plan leads will be completed in December, and was built intentionally with local voices and representation across the Palmetto State, who remind us of what we already know- the power to strengthen South Carolina comes from leaders at the local level. This work takes all of us.
So, look around you. Here you are, right here, right now, ready to do more for young children. In 2016 we will be moving faster and more audaciously to transform South Carolina by starting with our promise for the future: our children. Thanks you for all you do.
