By VICKI URBANIK

The need to prepare children better for school has become critical in Indiana, but early childhood education advocates need to do a better job of drumming up public support for programs like full-day kindergarten and pre-K school.That was the consenus among the educators and parents attending an education roundtable held Friday at Westchester Intermediate School.

Organized by State Rep. Ralph Ayres, R-Chesterton, the roundtable was aimed at airing local concerns and ideas for Ayres to take back to the statewide Indiana Commission for Early Learning and School Readiness, which is formulating early childhood education proposals for the 2005 Indiana General Assembly. One common concern expressed Friday dealt with a decrease in skills, particularly language skills, among children today.

Dr. Audrey Witzman, who just retired from the Illinois State Board of Education, said the biggest change educators are seeing in young children is their expressive language skills: Instead of describing colors and shapes and the like, children now tend to talk merely in short, quick sentences.

Duneland kindergarten teacher Joan Sosbe cited a study that children today have a 45 percent decline in language skills as compared to the baby boomers. Fellow kindergarten teacher Jane Pearson attributed that decline to a drop in children being read to at a very early age.

Research shows that up to 90 percent of one’s brain development occurs before age 3, said Kathy Mayers of the local Parents As Teachers program. Witzman said when she ran a preschool years ago, she found that beginning to teach kids at age 3 was too late.

Witzman said there is a huge difference in the language skills among children of professional parents and those who come from welfare families. It’s been found that some 3-year-olds in professional households have better sentence structure than poverty-level adults, she said.

On the other hand, Ayres cited another study that of children entering kindergarten who did not yet know the alphabet, 49 percent came from moderate to high-income families and 51 percent came from low-income families.

Regardless of their income or backgrounds, parents need to be given more tools and more education, several speakers said.

“People aren’t parenting poorly because they want to parent poorly,” Sosbe said. “We must first of all show parents we care about them.”

Sosbe said her hope is that all schools one day have an early learning educator, who would reach new parents in hospitals with educational resources, like the Growing Child series by Purdue University www.growingchild.com

Mayers cited one case in which the parents didn’t know the importance of talking with their child; the result was that the child didn’t talk at age 3.

People need to take a test before they’re issued a driver’s license, she said, but no one has to pass a test to become a parent.

“We need to give our parents tools,” she said.

Another common concern expressed Friday was that – with the audience made up mainly of educators -- the discussion was “speaking to the choir.” Those who understand the importance of school readiness need to drum up support beyond the traditional circles, they said.

“This is an urgent matter,” said Union Township Superintendent E. Ric Frataccia, who cited the statistic that for every $1 spent on early childhood education, the return to society is $7.

At Washington Township Elementary School, “we just decided it was urgent,” said kindergarten teacher Beth Garwood, the impetus behind the K-Care program, which is also available at Jackson Elementary. Like all-day kindergarten, K-Care supplements the child’s school day beyond the regular 2 1/2 hours of kindergarten.

Garwood said the program began after she began tutoring some of her students who were going to be held back. By teaching them for the full school day, “you can make leaps and bounds with those kids,” she said.

Duneland did have full-day kindergarten three years ago – which Pearson said was “a dream come true.” But Duneland School Board member Janice Custer attributed the program’s demise mainly to a state requirement that Duneland place all the at-risk children in one classroom. Because it didn’t, Duneland had to return a grant awarded to help defray the costs for low-income families, she said.

“It just made absolutely no sense,” Custer said, noting that lumping all at-risk children together goes against everything else in education. “How do you get rid of some of those idiotic requests?”

Similarly, Garwood questioned how the state can set standards for kindergarten – standards that teachers are held to -- when kindergarten isn’t even compulsory in Indiana. Ayres responded that the K-12 approach is based on a 150-year old model of what’s best in education.

Funding – or the lack of it – was also a concern Friday.

Susan Thode of Wee Care Child Development Center in Chesterton said Porter County lost more than any other county in the state in its Child Care Development Funds, which provide low-income families with day care assistance.

But Thode also lamented the changes brought on by welfare reform nationally. If parents make at least $7 an hour, they don’t qualify for tax-supported assistance for day care or preschool. And parents must have jobs, or attend school, to qualify for the assistance. Otherwise, she said, “there is no help.”

Bonnie Ouellette of the Duneland YMCA said one problem day care providers are seeing is that parents are quitting their jobs in order to qualify for welfare, which in turns bumps them higher on the waiting list for the CCDF help.

As for the full-day kindergarten proposal that was defeated in this year’s General Assembly, Ayres said Duneland and most other Porter County schools wouldn’t have qualified for funding, since the dollars were directed at schools with higher at-risk populations.

But Yost Elementary Principal Tom Dombkowski said all families should have access to programs like Parents As Teachers and quality preschool to help ensure a solid future for the kids -- so that ultimately, the kids don’t grow up making just $7 an hour or taxpayers don’t end up paying even more for incarceration.

“All of our kids in some way are at risk,” he said.

Contacts

Individuals wishing to learn more about, or express opinions to, the Indiana Commission for Early Learning and School Readiness can visit the website at http:// www.in.gov/elsrc

 or write to the commission in care of the Indiana Statehouse., 200 W. Washington, Indianapolis, IN, 46204.