Early Childhood Initiative
Funding secured to tackle achievement gap in BVSD
Community Foundation committed to accountability, continued partnerships
Wow and Doable: Chris Barge from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.
At The Community Foundation, we believe that together we can accomplish outcomes that can’t be achieved alone. We saw evidence of this when we partnered with The Boulder Valley School District in 2010 to pass the Yes on 3A mil levy override campaign. We backed it enthusiastically with financial and volunteer resources after the District made the community a promise: $5 million of the new money would be earmarked each year for closing the achievement gap with increased preschool and full-day Kindergarten slots for at-risk kids.
We celebrated when the measure won by a landslide, with 61% voting in favor. We are now committed to ensuring that the new slots get filled with students from low-income families. Our national research of best practices shows that early learning is the key to closing the achievement gap.
Closing the gap between Latino and Non-Hispanic white students is vitally important in the Boulder Valley School District, where the gap is among the state’s widest. A similar disparity persists in the St. Vrain Valley School District, as well as county-wide, between low-income and middle-and upper-income students. The gap separates before children enter kindergarten, and it only widens as they go through school.
Our work in this area is starting to pay off, but a steep road still lies ahead. Here is a taste of what else our partnerships and community leadership have accomplished as of this writing:
- Our investment in Providers Advancing School Outcomes (PASO) has helped it move from the brink of closure to an expansion phase. PASO trains informal daycare providers of at-risk preschoolers so that the kids under their care show up to school ready to learn.
- We created and launched a public awareness campaign called Ready.Set.Learn, which helped make the case to business and community leaders that early learning is a matter of personal, economic and national security. The campaign caught the BVSD School Board’s attention, and helped us secure our effective partnership with them on Ballot Issue 3A.
We applaud our volunteers, donors and business and community leaders who rallied with us behind this cause. Special thanks goes to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for funding the Ready.Set.Learn campaign, and to more than 1,200 local individuals who donated to The Community Foundation’s Community Trust Campaign. This fundraising campaign’s continued success will help us tackle the significant challenges that remain. The work ahead of us includes:
- Tracking the progress in BVSD towards closing the achievement gap with preschool and full-day Kindergarten for students from low-income families.
- Engaging with community and business leaders in northern Boulder County to tackle the achievement gap there with a sustainable source of public funding.
At The Community Foundation, we help people achieve collectively what none of us could accomplish alone. Together, we can close the achievement gap. Please join us.
