State Prekindergarten Programs in Child Care Centers
As state-funded prekindergarten programs grow across the country, child care centers can play an important role in providing these programs. While the majority of state prekindergarten programs are currently offered in public school settings, offering prekindergarten programs in child care centers has advantages for the centers themselves as well as for children, families, and communities. Parents working full time, in particular, benefit when prekindergarten programs are operated by child care centers that are able to offer a full-day program. To build on the National Women's Law Center's recent report, A Center Piece of the PreK Puzzle: Providing State Prekindergarten in Child Care Centers, the National Women’s Law Center, in partnership with the Early Care and Education Consortium, is offering a series of conference calls that will feature conversations with representatives from child care agencies operating state prekindergarten programs. The calls are interactive, offering an opportunity for participants to learn from and ask questions of their peers. Governance Issues Related to Prekindergarten / Child Care Collaborations The third conference call in this series, held on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 focused on the decision-making authority for state prekindergarten programs at both the state and local level, and examined issues such as how funding decisions are made, how children enroll in various prekindergarten programs, and what mechanisms exist to coordinate among prekindergarten programs and across different early childhood programs and services. The call was moderated by Karen Schulman, Senior Policy Analyst at the National Women’s Law Center. Presenters included:
Read the transcript or listen to a recording of this call. The second conference call in the series, held on Thursday, May 22, 2008, focused on workforce issues including compensation, professional development, and staff relationships between prekindergarten teachers to other child care staff. The call was moderated by Eric Karolak, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Early Care and Education Consortium. Presenters included:
Financing State Prekindergarten Programs in Child Care Centers Read the transcript or listen to a recording of this call. The first conference call in the series, held on Tuesday, March 25, 2008, focused on financing. Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy at the National Women's Law Center, moderated it in conjunction with Eric Karolek, Ph.D., Executive Director, Early Care and Education Consortium. Discussants included the following:
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