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The Early Childhood Coalition of Hays County wants to make sure people understand the importance of interactions and education in the first five years of a child’s life.
The coalition is hosting the third annual Early Childhood Summit at the Texas State University campus on Friday, May 10, from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. This year’s summit will include a keynote address from Patrick Gill of Children at Risk, and a screening of the new documentary “No Small Matter,” which focuses on early childhood education. Tickets are already sold out.
From birth to age 5, the coalition states, a child’s brain is rapidly building connections that will shape his or her future learning, health and behaviors. This period is most affected by interactions with that child’s caregivers, including parents and child care professionals. Without a strong foundation established in those early years, children are less likely to be successful in school and in the workforce. Friday’s summit is meant to help educate the public on the importance of high-quality early child care and education.
“We are making the case that strong early care and education systems boost economic development,” said Alex Mylius, home visiting program coordinator for Community Action Inc. of Central Texas.
These benefits come, she said, by ensuring that current employees have safe and affordable child care, that school districts can avoid spending excessive resources on remediating the effects of low-quality early care and education and that the future workforce has had support in developing the social and emotional skills needed to succeed in work and life.
“In my mind, the most compelling case to be made for the importance of early care and education is from the perspective of public health: that upstream solutions to some of the biggest problems facing our country can be addressed by investing in the early and equal development of human potential.”
The keynote speaker at Friday’s summit, Gill, is associate director of the Center for Social Measurement and Evaluation at Children at Risk. The organization is a nonpartisan research and advocacy entity dedicated to addressing the root causes of poor public policies affecting children. Patrick will be sharing an executive summary of Children at Risk’s recent report, “Building Brains and Economies: Quality Child Care as an Engine for Economic Development in a 21st Century Texas.”
“No Small Matter” is the first feature-length documentary to explore early childhood education. The film lays out the overwhelming evidence for the importance of the first five years of childhood development and reveals how failure to act on that evidence has resulted in an everyday crisis for U.S. families and a building catastrophe for the country.
The Early Childhood Coalition of Hays County is a group of organizations and individuals seeking to connect families and child care professionals to resources they need to ensure that children grow up in a thriving community in which they are happy, healthy and successful. Community Action Inc. of Central Texas, with funds from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, serves as the backbone organization for the Early Childhood Coalition of Hays County.
