The well-recognized Mother’s Day is celebrated with the most sincere of words uttered and flowers delivered to those who nurture young children. For many, May 8 is designated for families to honor mothers for a day. Isn’t it interesting that two days before is a nationally proclaimed holiday that serves to acknowledge someone for whom families are equally grateful – child care providers? Child care providers are arguably some of the closest people to any family without the gene connection and May 6, National Child Care Professionals Day, is a special day designated to celebrate their importance to parents, families and the community. The Kimball Early Childhood Coalition is localizing this national recognition day by hosting Child Care Provider Appreciation Day on May 10. Titled “Alive After Five,” this event will serve as an attempt to express the community’s gratitude to area child care providers, as well as initiate an ongoing network and training opportunity for providers in the Kimball community. The coalition estimates that more than 10 licensed child care providers in the area are caring for nearly 120 children in the immediate community. The “Alive After Five” program will not only create a solid network base for providers, but it will also serve as a means of quality training and is hoped to take place three to four times each year. This is the most aggressive attempt yet to bring these providers together and assist them in doing an important job that aids in strengthening early care and education in the community. One year growing Recognizing the child care providers and providing training opportunities is just one of the projects under way by the Kimball Early Childhood Coalition. Kimball has one of 36 coalitions operating throughout greater Minnesota as part of the Minnesota Early Childhood Initiative. This is a partnership between six Minnesota Initiative Foundations, Ready 4K, the McKnight Foundation and a number of Minnesota foundation supporters. Having started in January 2004, the Kimball coalition is a dedicated group of area representatives working to ensure that there are early childhood offerings available to all families and that the community’s youngest children are prepared for kindergarten. The heartbreaking reality of society today is that more than half of the children entering kindergarten are not prepared to do so and many never catch up. Faced with this, the coalition has managed to bring together many representatives from the community to look at school readiness issues for our community’s youngest children. After a community visioning session in March 2004, the coalition developed a plan and is committed to creating early childhood resources and opportunities that are available to all families; build awareness of early childhood and child care issues, opportunities and successes; and develop expanded preschool and early childhood opportunities with no waiting lists. In the past year, coalition participants have: o met with and encouraged area legislator to increase school readiness funding; o compiled and published a thirty page early childhood resource directory; o partnered with the Kimball Area Chamber of Commerce to launch a new residents program in the community, which will include the resource directory; o surveyed area child care providers about their business and program needs; o facilitated transportation for non-qualifying preschool students; o attended a statewide early childhood conference in March that attracted nearly 700 participants from 150 communities. o developed child care provider curriculum for ongoing local training opportunities and sought local funding to maintain this curriculum. o worked to make the school district’s entire preschool program accessible and understandable to parents. This work has been made possible with a $15,000 grant Kimball received in December 2003 from the Initiative Foundation. The coalition is already securing plans to write a second year grant to the Initiative Foundation for $10,000 to continue the current program and launch other school readiness projects in the community. Plans include looking closely at a new report published by the Minnesota Department of Education, “Early Childhood Indicators of Progress: Minnesota’s Early Learning Standards,” and working as a community team to communicate these indicators to many audiences. This report provides a framework for families, teachers, child care providers, the community and policy makers to provide support systems and resources for successful outcomes for the well-being of our youngest children. The coalition has created many partnerships in the past year that will make this second-year program possible. Show gratitude for child care providers Consider for a moment the average parent working eight hours each day and tending to everything outside of those hours that it takes to keep their life functioning. What would the parents of nearly 120 Kimball children do without area child care providers? The parents of Kimball children rely on their providers in a way that only parents could understand. The trust placed in providers is immense. Parents expect the best “parental” care from providers realizing how many hours they spend with children. This trust is gained through good working relationships between the parents and caring and high quality providers. Providers do so much for parents in their absence. Showing your gratitude on May 6 is just a small way of letting your child care provider know how important they are to you and your child. Our child care providers are an integral part of our community and are helping prepare our young children for kindergarten, and in the long run, building confidence and success. For more information on the Kimball Early Childhood Coalition or to receive the newly published Early Childhood Directory, call Margaret Arnold at (320) 398-6070. Tiffany Taylor is a student at the College of St. Benedict who volunteers her time with the Kimball Early Childhood Coalition.
