About our Children

I saw in the newspaper today that Whole Child Leon had released its 2016 report on the children of Leon County. You can find it here:

http://online.anyflip.com/ylil/kims/#p=1

Lots of charts and graphs showing the data, and there are some disturbing trend in recent years, like a big jump in 2009 of the % of children living in poverty (it has since stayed stable at that higher level). We have some huge issues including infant mortality and school readiness, and the problems occur at a higher rate among the low-income population.



Instructional designers and performance technologists are poised to be part of the solution to this problem. We need better education for expecting mothers and new parents, as well as supportive and functional services and systems that will ensure that all parents keep learning about child-rearing and development as their child grows so that can make choices that will help their children be healthy and thrive.  Take a look at the report. What opportunities do you see for ISD/PT folks to help?

I can't help but point out one of my issues in this area, although it's not an ISD one. Children who are 4 can enroll in VPK for free, and VPK focuses on kindergarten readiness. It's runs 2.5 hours per day, M-F. Kids learn letters, numbers, appropriate school behavior, etc. Sounds great, right?

My kid went through VPK 3 years ago. We had been at a preschool that started teaching letter sounds in the 2-year-old room. When they did the beginning of year VPK assessment, my daughter's small class (all kids who had been there for 2-3 years already) was all exceeding the end of year standards already. It's a great preschool! It's also an expensive preschool (costs twice as much as the lowest I've seen in the area, with a full month's deposit and tuition paid monthly), and the kids were coming from upper middle class homes. I'm pretty sure a good chunk of our tuition money went to paying for pre-school teachers who had a college education in an early childhood area (not required in Florida). The school qualified to offer VPK (not all child care facilities do), and we were all reminded to sign our kids up (a Saturday morning task over in Northwood Center) so we were eligible. What did that mean? If we signed her up and let them test/track her progress, the state would subsidize about $225 of our childcare costs each month. If we didn't, she'd do the same things every day but we would pay more and she wouldn't be tested. We signed up and saved about $2K that year.

During that year, I talked to a young woman who was a cashier at Publix. She told me about her daughter, who was almost 4. She was unaware of VPK altogether (how do people find out? my awareness was through our school). Her daughter went to a daycare (not a place offering VPK) and was cared for by a family member if she worked an evening shift. As I spoke to her, I realized that VPK would be a real challenge for people in hourly positions. While the state would help her find a facility offering a free VPK class for her daughter (usually they run 9-11:30, M-F), Publix isn't going to let her leave at 11 to pick up her daughter and transfer her from VPK to daycare. It just doesn't work like that. But I doubt she could have afforded our preschool, even at the VPK-reduced rates. So: are we reaching the target audience here with our free VPK programs? Or are the rich getting richer?