San Diego Launches Preschool
and Family Literacy Initiative
by Helen Gao, San Diego
Union-Tribune, September 9, 2004
Backed by a growing body of research showing the benefits of early
education, San Diego city schools Superintendent Alan Bersin yesterday
announced a two-year initiative to expand preschool and promote family
literacy.
Under the Smart Start Preschool Campaign, the district will partner with
community organizations to raise $4.6 million to add 1,600 preschool slots
in 30 of the lowest-performing elementary schools in the city.
The district's partners are San Diego READS, The San Diego Union-Tribune,
The Neighborhood House Association and The William D. Lynch Foundation for
Children.
San Diego READS will lead the campaign and collaborate with the
Union-Tribune to provide free newspaper subscriptions for up to 4,000
families in targeted areas. The subscription will come with a family
literacy curriculum on how parents can use the newspaper as an educational
tool.
Bersin said the goal is to raise the money in 18 months and make preschool
available to all families who want it in four years.
"In doing so, we will actually lead California. That's where California is
going and the nation is going," Bersin said yesterday at a news conference
at Kimbrough Elementary School in Grant Hill, one of the targeted schools.
"Preschool will be as basic to the American education system as
kindergarten already is."
About 3,400 children enter kindergarten each year at the district's
lowest-performing schools, which have 1,800 preschool seats.
School board member Katherine Nakamura said the preschool expansion will
remove "one more brick out of the barrier to education" and the separation
between "the haves and the have-nots."
A new study released by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation this week
found that the achievement gap for children exists before kindergarten,
but it can be closed substantially for children who enter preschool before
age 4 and attend classes regularly.
