Partnership receives 14 percent Smart Start funding cut
Smart Start helps match additional Stimulus Funds for Subsidy Services
Durham’s Partnership for Children, a Smart Start Initiative, announced Monday that the North Carolina Partnership for Children, the state Smart Start agency, cut its annual allocation by 14 percent or nearly $1.2 million for Durham County for the 09-10 fiscal year. Legislative cuts and a difficult economy come at the same time when families with young children’s need for services has increased. Cuts of this nature make it difficult to meet on-going community needs. The Partnership received a cut of nearly 9 percent last year. “This is hard all around because more Durham County families with young children as well as the child care community are facing financial hardship with the difficult economy increasing their need for our funded services, such as child care scholarships, family support programs, health related support, and child care technical assistance,” said Marsha Basloe, Executive Director of Durham’s Partnership for Children. Even with these cuts, Smart Start has worked closely with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and Division of Child Development (DCD) to make funding decisions in order to match the federal requirement for stimulus dollars for additional child care assistance for the state of North Carolina. Because of these efforts, Durham Social Services will receive $2.6 million additional one time stimulus dollars to assist families with child care subsidies. “Although this is a severely difficult cut to our Durham Smart Start allocation as it means our programs are not able to provide all the services needed, we are also appreciative that additional subsidy dollars will be made available to our Durham families. Without the support of Smart Start, North Carolina might not have had the opportunity to bring these needed resources to our state and to our county,” said Basloe. “This is a positive outcome of a very difficult task.” The early years are among the most significant in shaping a child’s academic and social skills providing the foundation for learning and school success. Research has shown that a child’s learning begins at birth and develops as children are engaged and challenged in high quality learning environments and nurtured in relationships with parents and other caregivers. Basloe added as the economy recovers, she hopes legislators will support early childhood efforts. Research shows that children who enter kindergarten ready to succeed grow to be the capable students of tomorrow.
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
Local public safety leaders support more funding for early care and education
Tough times require tougher measures. In the wake of shrinking budgets for most everything with legislative funding, local law enforcement leaders support early care and education as an alternative anti-crime measure.
At a news conference on August 31, Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez, Durham Sheriff Worth Hill and Hillsborough Police Chief Clarence Birkhead joined forces with Washington-D.C. based Fight Crime: Invest in Kids to call on the US House of Representatives to pass federal legislation for the Early Learning Challenge Grant (HR 3221 passed the House of Representatives Thursday, Sept. 17).
During the press conference, a report was presented entitled, Invest in Early Education Now, Spend Less Later, indicating that providing at-risk children with high-quality early care and education, may dramatically reduce crime as well as incarceration costs in the future. These leaders joined a force of 5,000 through the national initiative, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids supported by the Early Learning Challenge Fund.
In North Carolina alone, there are more than 63,000 incarcerated adults and the cost in taxpayer dollars averages $27,000 per inmate annually at an overall cost of $1.07 billion dollars a year invested in the corrections system. Increasing the investment in early learning would systemically cut costs by $270 million due to reduced crime and ultimately a smaller inmate population. Sheriff Hill reiterated that investing in high quality early care and education for at-risk young children would generate a significant cost-savings benefit.
As the research shows, high-quality early care and education and early intervention for at-risk children birth to age 5 will garner the highest crime reduction benefits. Momentum continues to grow with the Fight Crime: Invest in Kids message. Under the HR 3221, legislators have earmarked $1 billion per year for eight years to support expansion for early education programs nationally.
For 15 years, Durham’s Partnership for Children has worked to build Durham's early childhood system. A larger federal investment focused on children in the early years means more of the county's poorest children (23 percent of all children birth to age 5 in Durham County) could have exposure to quality learning environments before kindergarten.
Brainstorm session with key community leaders examines child care options downtown
Bill Kalkhof, President of Downtown Durham Inc.; Casey Steinbacher, President and CEO of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce; John Weiser, Brody Weiser Burns; and Steve Toler, Steve Toler, LLC.
On Aug. 27, The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Durham, Inc. (DDI) invited key leaders of the Downtown Business community to have a strategic discussion about the importance of young children and the role employers play to make Durham a great place to raise a young family.
The Chamber and DDI, Inc. worked with the Partnership to organize this breakfast and to bring John Weiser from Connecticut-based Brody Weiser Burns, to lead the discussion on how early childhood issues affect the business community.
John Weiser co-founded Brody Weiser Burns in 1984 to pursue his vision of business strategies as a force for social change, after two years with the Boston Consulting Group. Since then he has helped social ventures, nonprofits, businesses, foundations and public sector agencies create, build consensus around, and implement a broad range of partnership strategies.
"The Partnership is excited to be working with the Chamber and DDI on this issue. With the enormous growth in our downtown Durham community, child care is a key strategy to attract and retain top organizations and businesses to the downtown area. Bringing John to Durham to speak to the business community was yet another step in our efforts to work with the business community in building family-friendly workplaces for working parents,” said Marsha Basloe, Executive Director of Durham’s Partnership for Children. “We appreciate the partnership with the Chamber and DDI to discuss this issue as it impacts today’s workforce and our future creative talent.”
Nearly 100 Durham preschool teachers convene for training conference
Primary Colors Director Kara Turner (center) and her staff pictured at the annual More at Four Pre-Service Training
Durham’s Partnership for Children hosted a two-day training conference for the More at Four Pre-Service training at Grey Stone Baptist Church.
The training for Durham’s pre-k programs covered program guidelines, classroom management, nutrition, family support, and fun with literacy, math and science for approximately 100 early childhood educators who will be serving nearly 400 children through the More at Four program in Durham County.
“Professional development for preschool teachers is very important as 90 percent of a child’s brain growth develops by preschool. These teachers are tasked with teaching children at the most critical time in their development. These trainings will support their efforts to ensure more of our county’s children arrive to kindergarten ready to succeed,” said Marsha Basloe, executive director of Durham’s Partnership for Children.
The training also provided an overview of the Dial-3 test administration—a tool for screening preschool and kindergarten children in a supportive environment. Uniting together is the overall emphasis of the training as these teachers work with young children, many whom have never been in a formal child care setting and may be at-risk for school failure due to economic and language barriers.
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