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Pre-K Black Belt kids overlooked
Published Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Pre-kindergarten is so important to the educational development of children, especially children who are deemed from "at-risk" areas.
These areas rank at or near the top in high poverty, high unemployment and low educational attainment. The children in these areas have moms that work three part-time jobs to feed the family or have a missing father, perhaps in a jail somewhere for some drug-related crime. Or even these kids just are the kids of dropouts who don't have the parenting skills to give their children a boost.
Pre-kindergarten can help parents, too by strengthening the commitment to and attitude toward school and enhance the parenting skills of the children who participate in these preschool programs.
Take, for instance, a study in Chicago of the Chicago Child-Parent Centers. These centers provide education and family support to low-income children from ages 3 to 9. The study has followed children through age 21. The determination: these children were less likely to be held back a grade or placed in special education and were more likely to have completed high school and less likely to have been arrested for a crime as a juvenile.
On Tuesday, Governor Bob Riley announced that 27 classrooms were selected to become First Class Pre-K sites. Fifteen of the 27 classrooms, including one in Choctaw County, received $45,000 Pre-K Excellence Grants.
Choctaw County is the only one of the 13 Black Belt counties in Alabama to receive a designation. Most of the schools are in Mobile and other higher population areas with more resources.
Once again, the Black Belt — the high minority, low employment, high poverty section of Alabama — is overlooked when it comes to programs that could lift this region out of the mire.
But, then, perhaps there are not enough resources to come out of the Black Belt for certain candidates in this state.
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Comments
Posted by I_saw_what_you_did_in_Selma (anonymous) on July 7, 2009 at 7:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Either everybody should get free pre-K or nobody should. Period.
It amounts to nothing but free daycare in most cases anyway. Then again, most public schools are nothing but free daycare.
Posted by ALSchoolReady (anonymous) on July 8, 2009 at 1:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Unfortunately, this piece is incorrect. The state has already funded 20 pre-k sites in the Black Belt counties. Each grant is for 4 years, so these existing sites did not need to re-apply. The addition of the Choctaw County site brings the total to 21 state funded pre-k sites in the 13 Black Belt counties for the upcoming year. In the 2010-2011 school year, 378 Black Belt children will be in First Class sites which is more than 10% of the program's total enrollment.
Posted by twright (anonymous) on July 16, 2009 at 9:21 a.m. (Suggest removal)
When you publish something so far inaccurate (and easy to verify), everything you write is called into question. This isn't the first PreK site in the Black Belt, there are over 20 and there are also thousands of "at-risk" children in FREE Head Start programs. And, some schools pay for PreK with their Title I money -- and that's also for "at risk" kids. And, low income "at risk" people who work can get help paying for day care. So, contrary to your whining and accusation of "overlooking once again", about the only ones who get free government programs are the "at risk".
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