Partnership for Children to host Business After Hours

The Randolph County Partnership for Children will host Business After Hours on Thursday, November 18, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at 349 Sunset Avenue in Asheboro. The fall-themed event will feature homemade hors d’oeuvres, networking opportunities, and door prizes. Community members and business leaders are invited to attend.

Since its inception in 1999, the Partnership for Children has impacted more than 50,000 children and their families throughout Randolph County. During the past ten years, significant gains have been made to ensure young children are healthy and ready to succeed once they enter school.  Hundreds of at risk children have participated in high quality pre-k programs at numerous sites throughout the county. More children are accessing preventive health care services and receiving well-child check-ups. Thousands of children are eating healthy food and getting more physical activity.  More parents understand the value of and are reading to their children. High quality child care options with educated teachers are now available to working parents. There are now 45% more child care and preschool options than in 1999, and there has been a significant increase in the education levels of child care teachers and directors. Millions of dollars have been leveraged and or raised by the Partnership and its volunteers to benefit our children. Kindergarten teachers affirm the results as these children enter school ready to succeed.

Involvement and support from local business and community leaders are essential to ensuring early childhood opportunities for children in Randolph County.

“Early childhood education has a tremendous impact on the national economic security and the viability of the American dream.”

These are the words of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – not typically known for speaking on behalf of children’s issues.

Yet business leaders and economists are becoming some of the best advocates for young children. They know early childhood investments are critical to keeping the U.S. competitive in a global market. After all, their future workers are today’s newborn babies. Building a strong and productive labor force largely depends on how well we baby-proof the economy today.

Just as parents baby-proof the top of the stairs to prevent a dangerous fall, policymakers must protect the economy from making a major misstep. Investments in early childhood education are the economic equivalent to investments in gates for stairs and covers for electrical outlets.

So what does economic baby-proofing look like? It starts with investing in high-quality early childhood programs.

Early experiences shape the brain’s wiring, determining whether a child’s brain architecture will provide a strong or weak foundation for all future learning. In addition, brains, like houses, are built from the bottom up. You can’t put the second story on until you have built the foundation. According to Dr. James Heckman, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and Nobel Prize winner, this is why remediation is less effective and more costly than providing what children need to thrive from the get-go. Simply put, the building blocks for learning are well established before a child enters kindergarten.

The U.S. Chamber’s new report, “Ready, Set, Go! Why Business Should Support Early Childhood Education,” addresses these essential building blocks.  Some of its recommendations include: the importance of qualified and effective early childhood educators, integrate early learning and care systems for children from birth to age 5, and increase the availability of high-quality programs that support working parents.

North Carolina has led the way in early childhood. With Smart Start, North Carolina became the first in the nation to create a statewide early childhood system.  It was the first to develop a Quality Rating and Improvement Systems – the star-rated license. All are national models. The Chamber report highlights North Carolina’s work as one of five promising practices.

The Chamber's report concludes:

"With current early childhood education resource levels, too many kindergarteners will continue to begin school ill-prepared, language skills and achievement scores in math and reading will likely remain at mediocre levels, costs for interventions during the K-12 years and after will continue to rise, high school graduation rates and postsecondary degree completion rates will likely remain unchanged, and businesses will lack the necessary workforce to fill the jobs of the future."

To RSVP to Business After Hours, please contact the Asheboro/Randolph Chamber of Commerce at 626-2626.