engaging the entire community to make early childhood a top priority

The Best Investment For a Skilled Workforce, a Stronger Economy, and a More Just Society

WHY THIS IS A WISE INVESTMENT

13% Return on Investment in Early Education

"Investing in comprehensive 0-5 childhood education is a powerful and cost-effective way to mitigate negative consequences of poverty on child development and adult opportunity." James Heckman, Nobel prize-winning economist

Break the Cycle of Chronic Poverty

Children who are NOT READY for Kindergarten and NOT READING on grade level by 3rd grade are 4X's more likely to drop out of school and more likely to...

Live in Poverty...

Have Poor Health...

Become Incarcerated...

Increase Workforce Participation

70% of non-working parents say they do not work because of lack of childcare

26% of parents say they left their job because of childcare issues

Fiscal Cliff -- Parents avoid job advances to keep childcare subsidies

Prepare Tomorrow's Workforce

Starting early is the best way to prepare our future workforce to fill a widening skills gap.

60% of jobs will require degree or certification by 2025

48% of workers have degrees or certifications now

Almost half of jobs in Central Florida will be replaced or will require high-tech skills by 2039

ABOUT US

What We Do

What We Will Achieve

How We Do It

"Becoming a K-Ready Community" is a 3-year collective-impact initiative that is engaging leaders from all sectors to make high-quality, equitable, and accessible early childcare and education a priority to ensure that every child gets the start they need to be successful.

Diverse sectors of the community are working together to achieve one goal: ensure all children in Orange County are ready for kindergarten, ready to read, and ready for success.

How We Do It

What We Will Achieve

How We Do It

"Becoming a K-Ready Community" seeks to transform early childcare and education in Orange County through focused collaboration, realignment, and use of resources by all sectors of the community.

Collective impact shifts from a focus on individual programs to a more disciplined and full-system approach to achieving dramatic, large-scale social change and impact. It engages affected citizens and leaders from all sectors to create a common vision, understand and solve problems, and create systemic change.

What We Will Achieve

Vision -- All children in our community have access to high-quality early childcare and education

Impact

Better education results --

Kindergarten-Ready, reading on grade Level by 3rd, graduation and education attainment

Reduced levels of poverty and disparity

Reduced workforce skills gap

taking action -- stages to recover and rebuild better

K-Ready Community responds to the crisis

As the spread of coronavirus has brought cities all over to a standstill, shuttering businesses and stretching emergency workers and resources to the breaking point, it has also brought front and center the importance of early childhood teachers and caregivers, an often overlooked and under-valued workforce. What officials and companies are realizing, what has always been true, is the fact that it is childcare that allows every other industry to work and that childcare workers are also on the front lines doing their part to fight this pandemic – but without the guidance, resources, protection, and supplies they need to do it.

Essential workers can’t do their jobs without safe and reliable childcare, yet childcare is becoming harder to find during this pandemic as more childcare centers close down each week without much warning. In fact, about 40% of centers have closed as of mid-April, and most believe they will never reopen without immediate and significant help.

The effects of a breakdown of the fragile preschool industry will be felt not just for months or years but for generations as the most vulnerable children in our community fall even further behind with fewer opportunities to escape the deep inequities and chronic poverty that already existed.

So when the impact and duration of the pandemic became immediately apparent, our K-Ready Community team pivoted our work to focus first on caring for those who care for our young children -- to support our providers and to help meet the childcare needs of essential workers -- during the crisis but always keeping an eye toward a better future for our kids.

The work is divided into three overlapping stages, starting with convening an ECE Pandemic Response Team with leaders in the ECE industry to provide services, guidelines, resources, and advocacy for the ECE providers and essential workers.

In the Reset stage of work, we are rallying K-Ready Champions to build a collective vision and plan to rebuild and transform the early care and education system so that ALL children get the start they need to be successful in school and in life.

Learn More

This is not just a problem for the schools or the non-profits to worry about. We all have a stake in the early care and education of our children, and it will require a coordinated, multi-sector effort.

To do this and do it quickly, we need help from the entire community – businesses, government, philanthropy, individuals, and churches -- to become “K-Ready Champions for Kids” and make the well-being and the future of our children and ultimately the entire community a top priority.

Find out more

engaging the entire community to make early childhood a top priority

JOIN THE K-READY COMMUNITY ALLIANCE

why this is important

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WHY THIS IS A WISE INVESTMENT

13% Return on Investment in Early Education

Break the Cycle of Chronic Poverty

Increase Workforce Participation

Prepare Tomorrow's Workforce

ABOUT US

What We Do

What We Will Achieve

How We Do It

How We Do It

What We Will Achieve

How We Do It

What We Will Achieve

What We Will Achieve

What We Will Achieve

taking action -- stages to recover and rebuild better

K-Ready Community responds to the crisis

Learn More

Our Sponsors and Supporters

Contact Us

Join the K-Ready Alliance! We will be in touch soon.

"Becoming a K-Ready Community" is a project of