[Music] [Music] Education is a right Hi I'm Shelly Davies and
I am the senior Marketing and Outreach manager for Preschool Promise Preschool Promise started as a
part of learn turn with my friend Maya here and we became our own separate entity in 2017 and our
goal is for every Montgomery County child to be ready School ready day one and how we do that is
we have supports for families we have supports for teachers and we have supports for those children
themselves help them be successful and
Equity is at the heart of everything that we do. So my
name is Maya Dorsey I'm the director of K12 strategies at Learn to Earn Dayton um just like Shelly said you know our job is to take the good work that they've done early at the preschool
level and take it through our um Milestones our K12 milestones and so we really focus on um
you know K Readiness and third grade reading and eighth grade math and all those different
Milestones along the way. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of H
uman Rights discusses
the right to education What does the right to education mean to you? When you look at that
right and it says that everyone's entitled to that right in the education it should be equal it
should be free it should be available to everyone um it should be good quality and it should be
regardless of your economic status, of your ethnic background. Any of those other determinating
factors and I think that we all can realize that that's really isn't the case, like free and
available to everyone is not also equal um that's where a lot of the um inequities of education
come into it um and they start right away they start with availability for affordable and high
quality prechool which is probably the reason why Preschool Promise became um who we are to begin
with um in short there's a lot of people who never attend preschool and I always tell anytime I
talk about this I always say that I didn't attend preschool and on the first day of kindergarten
I came home a
nd I said "all those kids knew each other" and my mom said "preschool's for rich kids"
and you think that it's really not but for a lot of people they either don't know how to access it
or they have no way to pay for it and daycare is expensive Child Care is expensive and preschool
is expensive for families and so Preschool Promise is trying to initially eliminate that
barrier and helping families pay for preschool and helping them find high quality preschool
and that was just the beginning
of what we were looking at so just to start that's in inequity
that continues and will continue. Absolutely, you know the issue is that um children should have the
right to a public education regardless of you know race economic status zip code um and so that's we really focus on to Learn to Earn we realized that you know one of the things that we say is
that Talent is everywhere but opportunities are not and so as a backbone organization our focus
is trying to figure out ways to provide th
ose different resources and opportunities to support
the 16 school districts here in the county um in whatever way they need as a support to really try
to eradicate that data right so we just realized that kids can't help where they're born they can't
help where they live so everybody has the right to a high quality education every student
and so you know our focus is making sure that not only do we get them ready to start school in kindergarden
but we want them to also graduate high school
we want them to go into career, go into workforce and
we want to make sure that those opportunities are possible. So you know as a parent myself um I will
say you know 8 years ago we decided to move from one community um to another and that was because
I really; every parent wants their children to have the best that they can provide I I have
not met one parent who was like no I want my kid to have the worst, every parent wants their child
to have the best it's just unfortunate that you kno
w the best isn't the standard everywhere and so
that's where we have work to do as a community to make sure that we eliminate those conditions that
prevent students from having the best educational experience possible because those opportunities
just like for my own two children um I realized was not available in one school district and
so me being an educator you know my husband and I we had to make a decision to move our kids
to a different community and that's unfortunate because we we l
ike the community that we lived
in but we realized that there was limitations and so you know when we say talent is everywhere
opportunities are not that goes for my children too I want my children to have the right to as
many opportunities for them to be exposed for them to not only have their own skills and talents
nurtured but think about things that maybe they haven't even considered and so that's where we
have to as a education system do better you know one of the things that Geoffrey
Canada says is that
you know education is a billion dollar industry and it's the only industry that allows that
failure you know that's okay with failure and so you know I see our job at Learn to Earn to
try to help eliminate, raise awareness, advocate so that we can really make sure the pathway
for children are better Resources and Equity I think the resources is an issue right. So just like I cited you know for the school district that my children were in you know 8/9 years ago they only h
ave so many resources available you see that with even like the Arts.
The Arts are not available like it was when I was growing up in all schools you know because
it's all about budgeting it's about you know do we have the budget to have certain programs
So again you can have a student who's musically inclined you know that cannot get that nurtured
in their particular school and so I mean that's a minor example of an inequity but again you know
depending on where schools are you know, zip co
de wise may also determine access opportunities,
exposure, field trips, all different types of things but we know that the the socio-economic gap is
real and um we just continue to see it perpetuate right now we know that around um 62/
63% of students in Montgomery County are third grade reading proficient, Why is that? That's not enough
um we need to have 100% of students reading proficient and so that proficiency should not be
determined based off of where you live it should not be determ
ined based off the school you go to
um right now we see post COVID that there are so many schools that don't have qualified teachers in the
classroom, licensed teachers in the classroom um we see a lot of Subs that are in the classrooms and
so again when we talk about high quality when we talk about opportunities, when we talk about you
know making sure that students have what they need to be successful those are some barriers
and you know unfortunately a lot of times those barriers persist
in certain economic areas you
know that are to no fault of the children you know I I totally agree with that the resources Maya and
I were talking about that um before we started that's what we find with a lot of families as
well is that and I totally completely agree is parents want to do the best for their children so
they are looking for them and there's so much, it's very earnest on families to keep fighting
for the resources that should be available for their children and that's where
there's a lot
of advocacy that also goes into um the both of the work that we both do and um and resources is
part of that because you in especially now in this post-pandemic world that we're living in so when
I'm I'm looking at preschool again these are these are the pandemic babies who are in preschool now
and there are not enough resources for the amount of need that these children need to have in order to be successful
in preschool and that is not just in the family child care it's it'
s not in our our community
providers it's also in the schools themselves and so it's really difficult for parents to be able
to navigate their way through knowing that their child needs some more resources so they could be
successful asking for those resources and also sometimes hearing from schools we don't have the
availability to service your children your child for all the sour the resources that they need and
quite frankly that they're entitled to that's part of the advocacy work that
we do I had mentioned
equity before and part of that Equity is um the equity of accessing helping people know what their
rights are and being able to access those rights so um a lot of what we do I um I can speak for
Preschool Promise we have a lot of focus groups and a lot of family committees parent family
voices I I run a parent advisory committee and they tell us what it's like trying to navigate
in different parts of of um the school and and just recently the conversation was about hav
ing
children who have diagnosis having children who are um being um referred to be um to go through
a diagnostic evaluation so that they can qualify for services and because of the limitations of
Staff because of the limitations of resources of the schools sometimes they can't even get that
um evaluation done and they know my child is not does not have everything they need to be able to
be successful and so that really starts to um it's like a pebble into a classroom so if you have a
child
who's not getting the resources they need to be successful it also the teachers then who
are trying to um accommodate that child the best they can they often don't have the resources that
they need and so that just becomes a difficult situation for all the children in that classroom
and it's difficult because I think for a lot of families they um they start to get disillusioned
and that's not the best way for them to then enter into the K12 school and and think what it's
to it's too diffic
ult and sometimes parents harden themselves to it as well they don't want
to know that their child needs more things because they tried to access it before and they were
unsuccessful um so that I when I think about a lot of the advocacy work that we do it has to do with
resources and um the other part of it that I'll just bring up now is another part of equity that
we talk about is racial equity and particularly for our children of color and particularly for
our black boys we've done a lot
of a lot of um work and a lot of listening of how to help the
black boys be successful because um they are only leading in preschool they only lead with one
percentage and it's expulsions and it really has to do with how their behavior
is perceived and often times implicit bias that teachers have that quite frankly we
all have and sometimes we're not aware of it the bias that they're bringing to that is making
that that behavior look worse than it is because of who is having that behavior.
I would like to
share something that came out of the committee to um make preschool classrooms black
boy friendly and it was it was a group of 15 men um leaders from around the city and county
Montgomery County and city of Dayton and they came up with different recommendations of how what
that would look like moving forward and one of the things that was determined one of the phases
was to um have site ambassadors so they're called black boy brilliant site ambassadors and they are
um partn
ered with preschool classrooms and um we have providers that we partner with and of those
122 there's different sites where somebody will partner and it's putting an adult black male into
that classroom for several reasons one there's very few men in early childhood education and two
there's even fewer men of color that are in early childhood education and so it gives children an
opportunity. What is familiar to you is no longer scary to you and um there's one um
gentleman in particular he
was one of the first ones that started, today we had an annual lunch
in where we shared information with key holders and supporters of preschool promise and he
said what I love about it is that they are seeing a black man who is just somebody they might see at
the store or he comes in and he's taught them how to put a fish tank together I'm not a celebrity
I'm not an athlete I this is who I am and it's a really great environment for them to see and
there there's five boys in that classroom
and even the teacher said I've noticed how much
they're talking to each other because when Mr Chris comes they want to talk to him and then the
peer-to-peer conversations were going on as well and it's just normalizing things that sometimes in
our um in our country are things that you um don't necessarily have normalized for you um especially
when when things are put on social media and on regular media so that has been part of the
the black boy brilliance has been really helpful for um try
ing to right some of those inequities
when it comes to race and how it is impacting our youngest learners, to help set them up for success
so that when they get to kindergarten they've been able to have that successful preschool experience
and and then continue on through their K12 career and at Learn to Earn we want to be able to continue
to sustain that impact you know um again we see on the Cradle to Career Continuum we see that
Preschool Promise is on the front end of that from birth th
rough preschool up to kindergarten and
then we see us as okay taking that and trying to continue to support the students down that Milestone
all the way through um you know graduation career going to college you know whatever they decide and
so that work that they do is very important so we really are partners sometimes people probably
um I know for me they interchange preschool promise and Learn to Earn together because we
were together at one point but I see us still as um a collaborative
partner and and a necessity
to one another's work so um it's it's really great to have that collaboration and really respect
the work that's being done. Because it's going to continue there if you look at the success the
percentage of children who attended preschool the percentage of children who pass the third grade
reading proficiency the percentage of children who who graduate from high school the percentage of
children go on to college it's the same percentage it's that it follows thro
ugh and um something
you had asked earlier was what does that look like on the state level um I think it's it's
challenging I think that the governor um he talks about how important it is that we need to put we
need to fund our early childhood education we need to fund our um people who are providing child
care and I don't doubt that he feels strongly about that but then as it goes through
what does that look like when we get down to the dollars and cents of it it doesn't equal and so
that
again is where that advocacy comes and it's important for people when you talk about how can
people support how can they be a part of this is that I think it's always important for us all to
remember that the elected officials do work for us and it's important to say this is something that
is important to my family it's important to my community in which I live um and just just don't
let off that pressure on them to keep it in front of them. And families have the power parents have
the pow
er right and so as they come together and they really understand the importance of the "why?"
um then they can advocate I think there's power in that, you know imagine going to the state house and it's parents that are up there that are leading the charge and saying we want this we want change
you know if it's parents going into the school board meetings collectively and saying that these are
the things that we want for our children there's power in that and so the more that we can again
supp
ort families to understand the importance and the significance of advocacy um I think the
more gains we can make in terms of student achievement. Advocacy So I mean just piggy backing off of that
when you talk about advocacy. Advocacy is very very important um it's important because you know
when I was in school many years ago. When I was in elementary school many years ago um you know
it was kind of like felt by parents you know I send my kids in school they'll get an education
they're goi
ng to do what my kid needs to to you know teach them what they need to learn and then
my kid comes home um but we're in a different day you know we're in a different day which means that
it is everyone's responsibility we have to be all hands on deck and parents don't know what they
don't know you know and so we make assumptions to in the education space that parents should
know certain things um they should know you know about chronic absenteeism they should know you
know to send their kid
s to preschool they should know you know um about the KRA for kindergarten
Readiness and begin to um teach them the different developmental things that need to be prepared for
for kindergarten so when you talk about advocacy it's important for us you know in this space to
also lift that idea up of like, let me help inform you so that if you know better then
you're going to be able to use that knowledge and that awareness to support your children and so
um the focus groups we've done that um
and Learn to Earn you know we have focused on place
based work um in the last couple years within Northwest Dayton um partnership but in that we
hear that same feedback well I didn't know you know I didn't know you know that suspension led
up to you know these outcomes I didn't know if my child missed you know one day a month that is
going to lead up to these consequences. They don't know and so I think the more that we can inform and we can
collaborate and be in partnership with families
and really recognize that this is a community work
this is not just on Educators to educate our kids and that's it. I think COVID definitely disrupted
that whole idea because now the gaps are so wide academically that it's going to take
more than you going to school 5 days a week to close that gap it takes for parents to understand
okay these are the things that my student needs to know it takes parents to understand when they
take tests why is that important we tell parents you know read t
o your child every night, well read
what? Right, why do I have to read 20 minutes what is it going to do? Or we tell parents you
know to make sure your child gets sleep before they take a test or make sure they go to bed early
but then we don't know how to necessarily read the test they don't know how to interpret the test
so the paper comes home it comes in an email you're like oh great I see a number I see this
but I don't know what that means when you say um how my child what my child's
percentile is um
in reading or math and so I think that education and that advocacy piece and also informing our
families on what the policies are you know you know election time comes and all these different
ballots and stuff are up and parents are asked to vote Yes or No on certain issues but they don't
really understand what those implications mean for their children so I think we have to do a better
job as a community of informing the families so that they can really make authentic deci
sions but also
be in partnership with the people who are trying to serve them and serve their children. When is the right time to start thinking about preschool? Really it starts at birth. Parents are the first
teachers for their children and sometimes parents don't know like when does preschool start when
should I start looking for it and um a good resource is a pediatrician another good resource
is other um benefits that you might have um if you're ever if you're working with Help Me Grow
or if you go to libraries that we tend to put information for people in all the places where
families might be so they're at Health Centers they're at libraries, we go to food banks um we
go to parks we interact with people at splash pads um and start that conversation and a lot of times
people say oh I haven't even thought about it when when should I be thinking about preschool? How old
is your baby? She's three. Perfect this is the time to start thinking about it. But prior to that it's
j
ust connecting them with ideas of read to your baby that's a great thing to do um interacting
with other kids having free free things that are available all across the city are a good place for
that learning because learning for youngest children also starts with play it it looks like play. And
sometimes you don't know where to go you don't know these resources exist I would say since
I've come to Learn to Earn I've learned so much that I'm like had I known this when my children
were younge
r they could have had an even better start right. I did the best I could with what I
knew but parents don't always know where to go so even calling the school district and saying hey
when does preschool start when does kindergarten what should I be doing the school can guide you
and say okay call like she said help me girl call preschool promise or call and so I think if
parents absolutely don't know then you can still call the school district and they will point you
in the right direction
but a lot of times parents just don't know they don't know it's like you know
maybe they had a conversation with someone and said oh my child is in preschool oh yeah where you
know and then from there you pick up the phone you call and you say okay well can my child sign up or
well they need to do these things first so I think you know it's also as as Shelly said you know being
in the environment um having play dates for kids and talking to other parents because you don't know
things are di
fferent now um than they were when I was growing up things are going to be different
in 20 years when my kids are having kids right and so the more that we create this community of
support um and a safe environment where we can ask the questions um and I think the school wants
that they want they want children to come sooner they want to provide those interventions as early
as possible so I'm say at the very least if you don't know where to start call your local school
district and ask them
to point you in the right direction. Are there any resources for low income
parents? There are a few things. So if you have a parent who's not working or if
they have little to no income, Head Start is a good place for those children to be and Head Start in
Dayton is called MVCDC um and that can start their infinite toddler locations there and they provide
transportation they're really a good catch for um for families who possibly there's not
a lot of a good variety of choices for them and
then as you go from there there's publicly funded
Child Care. Parents are working and they need something that kind of mirrors more like a child
care setting but they also want that preschool component of it. The publicly funded Child Care
helps pay for that but doesn't pay for everything there's a co-pay and that's where Preschool Promise
comes in. If a parent has publicly funded child care we help by paying their co-pay and then you
have the parents who we have this conversation all the
time. I make too much I don't qualify for
anything I don't have anything extra to pay for preschool and that is a part of Preschool Promise
that's been there from the beginning that there's tuition assistance it's based on family size it's
based on their income and everybody qualifies for it and that does help that final barrier
for people finding somewhere. Final Takeaways It is your absolute right to get the best
education possible you so continue to advocate for it. Ask the tough questio
ns um you know stand up
for your children um I think that's the best thing and like and like Shelly said, it starts at birth
it's never too late you know um you you have an opportunity all the way through 12th grade
to figure it out and I think sometimes parents get discouraged um but ask the questions for
your children and also if it doesn't seem right there's a reason and the other thing I would
say about that is you know your child better than anybody else does and so if it if you're
th
inking I just don't think that I'm getting that my child is getting everything that they need
to be successful push and sometimes the kids will tell you right so believe them. So we'll end with I
think we all in agreement that education is a human right. Absolutely! We thank you for coming
and we appreciate your time. Thank you! [Music]
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