Aurora leaders start early childhood education initiative
Members of a new collaborative formed in Aurora say every child should be able to begin school before kindergarten.
The group, led by the Fox Valley United Way, on Thursday announced its goal of coordinating efforts in early childhood education to someday provide schooling before age 5 for every child in the city.
“The ultimate goal is to provide a meaningful (early childhood education) experience for every child in Aurora,” said Mike Meyer, Fox Valley United Way CEO. “It’s a lofty goal; we won’t get there overnight.”
But with a matching grant from the Dunham Fund and $15,000 donations from each of the four school districts that serve Aurora, the initiative has resources to get started.
The Dunham Fund gave the group a challenge grant, and for the next two years will match up to $125,000 raised each year by members of the initiative, which also includes the city of Aurora, school districts 129, 131, 204 and 308, and other early childhood education providers.
“One of the primary missions of the Dunham Fund is to support educational initiatives that will improve student achievement, graduation rates, et cetera,” said Bob Vaughan, the fund’s executive director. “We’re very happy to do that, and everyone agrees early childhood is the best place to start.”
Research conducted by early childhood education expert Theresa Hawley determined publicly funded preschool programs in Aurora have the capacity to serve 49 percent of the city’s 3- and 4-year-olds, a far cry from the statewide service level of 95 percent.
“We have more than half of the children in the community with no access to any type of early learning opportunity at all,” Meyer said. “If children come to school and they’re not prepared to succeed, more often than not they fail and that failure starts before they even get to school.”
The city and the Fox Valley United Way began studying the need for more early childhood education in 2008.
The opening of the One Hope United Aurora Early Learning Center in September 2011 was supposed to create more opportunities for children to enroll in a program, but because the Aurora YWCA and YMCA both stopped offering early childhood education, Meyer said the number of spots available did not increase.
Without enough opportunities for learning before kindergarten, Aurora’s workforce ultimately suffers, he said.
“The longer term implications are that these children, often when they begin failing so early, they don’t end up making it all the way through school,” Meyer said. “It ends up impacting workforce development and economic development for the community.”
Called SPARK, an Aurora Early Childhood Collaborative Initiative, the group aims to educate more children earlier to prepare them for a better future. SPARK is an acronym for Strong, Prepared and Ready for Kindergarten.
One of its first steps will be hiring a director to handle day-to-day operations as the initiative gets going.
“We just think it’s a great program,” said Vaughan with the Dunham Fund. “And we’re excited about funding it.”