Sen. Kaine talks pre-K education with local school officials

Posted on Wednesday, February 4, 2015 at 9:17 am

By Daniel Sherrier

Editor

 

After hearing “good things” about Lewis and Clark Elementary School’s pre-kindergarten classrooms, Senator Tim Kaine stopped by for a visit on his way to work Monday morning.

Kaine introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate last week designed to expand access to educational programs for children from birth to age 5. Titled the Providing Resources Early for Kids (PRE-K) Act, its goal would be to ensure more children are prepared to enter kindergarten.

Caroline Superintendent Gregory Killough, director of educational and federal programs Dolly Lindsay, and other central office and LCES administrators met with Kaine for about 30 minutes to discuss the importance of pre-kindergarten education.

Local officials touted the academic and social benefits of getting a head start on learning. Killough noted that former pre-K students tend to become leaders in their kindergarten classrooms, and Lindsay indicated that CCPS’s “dream” would be to someday offer an equal number of pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes.

CCPS is not currently able to provide a pre-kindergarten seat to every family interested in the program.

Following that meeting, Kaine popped in to LCES’s two pre-kindergarten classrooms. He read “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” to Mr. Scott’s class. Over in Mrs. Herbert’s class, the young children read their assignments to the former governor.

“For me, this is kind of reconnecting with a passion from my time in local and state government where we worked both in Richmond and at the state level to expand pre-K,” Kaine said toward the end of his visit.

“Just seeing these classrooms, but especially hearing folks talk about how powerful pre-K is in helping kids succeed (and) the fact that you’ve got kids on waiting lists who can’t get in because of space limitations, it really points out at the federal and state level that we need to try to have a partnership so that we can expand these opportunities,” Kaine continued.

“When you go into a pre-K classroom and a kid who is not even in kindergarten yet is reading, that tells you something about their likely success down the line, but it also tells you about the effectiveness of the teachers,” Kaine added. “Early childhood education pays dividends, not only for the rest of the child’s educational career, but even into adult success.”

While Caroline has embraced pre-K, Kaine said, that isn’t the case everywhere, as some other school divisions don’t even have full-day kindergarten classes yet.

Though Kaine described LCES’s pre-kindergarten program as a “very vibrant and successful one,” he said he “heard the message loud and clear” from local school officials that they are forced to turn children away from the program each year.

“That tells me that at the federal level, working with the state, maybe there is a way we can provide more resources so that more kids can be served,” Kaine said.

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