Mobilize stakeholders to ensure priorities are addressed
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How do we best engage as a business community to support K-12 education?
There are enormous resources coming from the business community directly or indirectly through philanthropy to supplement what government is spending on K-12 education. This support provides operating revenue for schools and capital campaigns to build new, refurbish or expand existing facilities. It supplements training programs, supports more teachers and provides internships for students. This support includes after school programs, tutoring, summer school and extracurricular learning experiences. It flows to individual schools as well as to school systems. All this is helpful and needed. What more needs to be done, and what can we do more strategically? Given this preamble, and even though it is out of the scope of our K-12 policy review, there is a convincing case to fund and improve the delivery of early childhood programing/interventions to prepare students for K-12. According to one advocate, “kids are lost before they start school, they are so far behind, can’t sit still, they can’t understand.” Of the 781 daycare providers rated in the YoungStar program, 329 programs serving 6,361 children had a two star rating (out of 5). Another 380 programs serving 10,945 children had a 3 star rating. There are a total of 19,984 kids in these daycare programs, meaning 86% are with providers rated mediocre or worse. Our first recommendation is to promote through Milwaukee Succeeds the policies that improve outcomes in delivering early childhood services to close the pre-school gap. |
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As a partner in Milwaukee Succeeds, advocate for policies that achieve better outcomes in early childhood services
In addition, the following recommendations will further sharpen our engagement as a community partner:
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Questions or comments? Contact Andrew Davis at 414/287-4141.