What’s Next?

Several factors promote school readiness including cognitive and social skills. Children who are kindergarten ready have the capacity to follow directions, take turns, control feelings and emotions, problem solve, and can play independently as well as with peers. In recent years, there has been increased recognition that school readiness is the result of the many contexts that children exist (i.e. families, schools, neighborhoods and early child care settings). Access to high quality, developmentally appropriate preschool plays a pivotal role in school readiness. Related to high quality pre-school, EPA has an Early Head Start Program as well as a Head Start Program, which provide early childhood education to residents of our city. Despite the availability of these programs, there are not enough affordable seats for all children in our city. Our City should continue to strive to bring in licensed providers so that all children in our community have access to an environment in which they can learn important academic and psychosocial skills.

Parents serve as their children’s first teachers and play a critical, and often under estimated, role in helping children develop the skills needs to be school ready. Positive parent-child relationships promote self-regulation, a core component of school readiness. Similarly, children who have parents that use coercive forms of punishment to manage behavior are less likely to develop the capacity to regulate their emotions. In addition to the parent-child relationships, there are several family factors that impact school readiness including maternal education level, welfare dependency, and non-proficiency in English. Given the important role family relationships and factors plays in promoting school readiness, there are several evidence-based national programs that East Palo Alto could consider integrating into their current portfolio of programs, including Healthy Start and Dual Generation Programs. Healthy Start is currently being implemented in 87 communities nationwide. Healthy Start aims to connect low-income mothers with health care resources to prevent infant mortality and address factors that may negatively influence development (age, education, and income of parents). Dual Generation Programs allow parents to attend school, vocational training, and/or workforce development while their children are enrolled in high quality childcare.

Lastly, the implementation of high quality, evidence-based parenting curriculums could benefit parents as well as children in our community. Successful parent education curriculums teach skills as well as promote attitude and behavior changes. There are myriad of effective parenting programs available; however, common factors of effective programs include; focusing on the inherent strengths of families, building on existing supports of families, tailoring the program to the unique cultural beliefs or traditions of the family, developing a collaborative relationship that allows the parents to feel like a partner, and considering the broad range of environmental factors that impact families.