In 2003, Success By 6 convened an Early Childhood Coalition as an ad hoc committee of Partners for Children, Youth and Families, to work collectively to create and promote a comprehensive system of early care and education that is accessible, affordable and effective in helping young children develop the social, emotional, physical and cognitive skills that they need to succeed in school and life. Specific objectives are:

• To gain a comprehensive picture of all existing services and programs including who is served, cost of service, number served, and funding sources.

• To make this information easily accessible to parents and other caregivers.

• To identify gaps in our early childhood service system.

• To develop public and private resources that will enable the coalition to collaboratively implement and sustain essential services.

• To work collaboratively with advocates throughout the state to educate policymakers about the human value and cost-effectiveness of designating community-based funding to support services devoted to early care and education.

The Coalition most recently completed a year-long community based strategic plan.  This data driven project is available in a one-page overview format or in a five-page, more descriptive, summary.

Click here (link) to view the Early Learning Strategic Plan Overview.
Click here (link) to view the Early Learning Strategic Plan Summary.
Click here to (link) to view the Early Learning Focus Group Report

RAISING A READER

The average child growing up in a middle class family has been exposed to 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture book reading by 1st grade, unfortunately the average low-income child has been exposed to only 25 hours of one-on-one reading. The problem is particularly acute in homes where English is a second-language.

The goal of Raising A Reader is for every preschooler to fall in love with books. Its mission is to substantially increase the number of low-income families who read with their infant and pre-school children frequently and routinely each week. Research overwhelmingly supports the premise that "the single most important activity for building understandings and skills essential for reading success appears to be reading aloud to children.

One of our primary outcomes for the children within our target areas is to increase their kindergarten readiness scores by 25 percent by September of 2005. Developing early literacy skills is one of the prerequisites for school readiness. Raising A Reader is a researched-based literacy program that works with the whole family. It is a "take-home" book bag program implemented though child care settings, home visitors, and local libraries. The program is proven to inspire even illiterate or limited-English speaking families to engage with their children around books and fall in love with reading.