Quality Facilities Lead to Quality Programs

In Minnesota, this is a bonding year at the legislature. Traditionally, this is the session when the legislature looks at passing money to build infrastructure such as public buildings, roads and of course bridges.

As part of our 2008 Legislative Agenda, Ready 4 K has worked in partnership with First Children’s Finance to increase state dollars for early childhood facilities through the Early Childhood Facilities Grant Program.

As a sign of the need around the state, in a recent Request for Proposals for this funding from the Department of Human Services, there were requests for twice the amount of the available funds. Earlier this session, thanks to the leadership of the Legislature, resources for the Early Childhood Facilities Grant program were increased from $500,000 to $2 million. However, the governor line-item vetoed these dollars. He cited that bonding proposals should come directly from the local communities, rather than through the grant program, even though the program has been in place for over 15 years and has helped to build 56 sites statewide totaling $13 million.

Click here to see our current action alert, asking you to call Legislative Leadership to ask them to include early childhood facilities dollars in the next round of the bonding bill.

If you’re interested in learning more about why public support for facilities are an important part of building a quality early learning system, check out this archived conference call from Pre-K Now, recorded in March 2008, Early Education Facilities: Buildings that Maximize Program Quality. This call featured presentations by David Wasch from the Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority, Molly Munger from the Advancement Project, and Hon. Beth Bye a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives. You can listen to the entire call and view slides and materials directly from the web page.

The key point of the call and the reason Ready 4 K is promoting early childhood facilities bonding dollars is that quality facilities lead to quality programs. If you are interested in learning about what a quality facility looks like, I recommend viewing the slide presentation Beth Bye shared during the call.

What do you think? Do you have experience with designing or building early childhood facilities? How has the facility impacted your program?

photo by momboleum