Mayor Thomas M. Menino will announce on Wednesday an initiative to help several community-based organizations bolster the quality of education they deliver in their pre-kindergarten classrooms.
The program’s goal is for children to graduate from these pre-kindergarten classrooms better prepared to succeed in Boston’s public schools.
Comments
The goal is laudable. However, where is the funding coming from? The already overly stretched school budget?
It is troubling that the City continues to utilize outside vendors to meet its responsibilities.
If the goal is higher achievement in the upper grades of BPS schools, then BPS out to run the program and start building relationships with the parents and guardians of the target population in order to keep them in BPS. Otherwise they may move to other school districts and Boston gets no return on its investment.
In conjunction with this initiative, it would be useful for the City and Massachusetts to push the Feds to revitalize Head Start so that preschool across the country can be made effective, affordable and safe.
I couldn't agree with Mass25 more. Head Start needs to be revitalized! I am concerned about the long-term funding, for the most part this is taxpayer money and the vendors that have applied are supposed to be "non-profits." So why should families have to pay? Is this money going toward "day care" or is this public school! Charging might prevent the needest of families from applying, or are these programs just for the working poor?
Also, three years isn't a long time, look what happened to the BPS "small schools initiative" when Gates pulled out! Will history repeat itself here? If BPS were really serious about this undertaking, they would open this program in schools and fill these K1 classrooms with certified teachers, not just people with college degree's! It is not enough to "love" children, you have to know how to educate them in order to provide a quality experience, and a couple of workshops with a "coach" just isn't going to provide that!