5 minute read
KINDERGARTEN READINESS
Executive director of Achieve Escambia, Kimberly Krupa wants all children to have the same opportunities and privileges that baby Ida Mae Wells had.
KINDERGARTENREADINESS and me
BY Kimberly Krupa
ACHIEVE ESCAMBIA
My fourth child was born at 9 p.m. on July 4, 2020. The exact moment she debuted, a rainbow of backyard fireworks exploded outside my third-floor window at
Baptist Hospital, all greens and blues and sizzling pinks. It sounded like 1,000 bottles of champagne popping, fizzing over, and popping again, a celebration of life and freedom and hope in the middle of a perilous pandemic summer.
I don’t usually write about myself when I write about kindergarten readiness. But the collective trauma of the past year has meant, for me, casting aside my old ways of doing things and forcing myself into the story.
I am privileged to lead a partnership,
Achieve Escambia, whose members have set a bold goal of 75 percent of children entering kindergarten ready to learn by 2025. I am privileged to work with people who live and breathe this goal every day. I am privileged to now share the communitywide burden of achieving this goal as I raise up a member of the entering kindergarten class of 2025.
I am privileged to be a 42-year-old white woman whose children have “zero” opportunity gaps. My first three babies entered kindergarten ready to learn, and I have no doubt my newest baby will follow, if not surpass, their lead, as youngest children sometimes do. My oldest, a high school freshman once complained in a fit of rage, “I have to rake the leaves; they get to walk down the path.”
This 2020 baby? Don’t worry about her. She has a clean and clear path ahead of her, lined with excellent prenatal care, an uncomplicated birth, regular pediatric checkups and developmental screenings, a year of breastfeeding, rooms full of books, toys to meet each milestone, from crawling and pinching to clapping and singing and solving. Beyond that, a neighborhood with sidewalks and parks. Married parents with two incomes. And, above all, white skin.
It is important to state what my privilege is, to make the invisible visible, to put myself in this story. I am not on the receiving end of a patchwork quilt of inequitable investments and practices that, in our country and in our community, are not distributed fairly to support young children on their journey to school. I have access to rapidly expanding insights into early brain and child development. I can afford every leg up our system provides because I know that system and, having power and privilege, I know who to call when the system malfunctions.
I can’t change the fact that I am a white woman raising children in a society where race and ZIP code are destiny.
What I can do is reveal how I’ve been able to experience an unequal set of opportunities, do something about it, and at the same time get more parents into the work of raising children to be ready for school … and ready for life.
One of the things I’m most excited about as we break out of our pandemic
year is Parent University Pensacola, which is designed to be a big open tent for all things parents. The model was born out of Savannah, Georgia, and is scaling to our community, slowly and deliberately, because its heartbeat is parents.
Parents invite parents, parents drive parents, parents cook for parents, parents coach parents. Parents design the curriculum, rate the instructor and choose who gets to be their expert.
Why does this matter? To balance white people like me, with all of my good intentions.
Because the only way to achieve a kindergarten-ready community is to give power back to parents and communities, to move over and make space for others to lead.
Dr. Kimberly Krupa is executive director of the Achieve Escambia cradle to career partnership. Learn more about the partnership on their website, AchieveEscambia.org.
WHY ARE SO FEW CHILDREN READY FOR KINDERGARTEN? IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH DIGGING TO SEE THE CULPRITS:
→ One out of five children enter kindergarten with limitations in their social, emotional, cognitive and physical development that might have been significantly diminished or even eliminated through early identification and attention to child and family needs.
That’s why we often say in our partnership, “Early screening matters!” → Early experience matters. All of a child’s early experiences, whether at home, in the community or in preschool, are educational. Yet in our community, we have alarming rates of preschool expulsion. You read that right: 4-year-olds kicked out before they even have a chance. We have a mandate to support social-emotional development and address behavioral concerns early before they flare up in the classroom and in the court. → Pediatric primary care providers have access to our youngest children and families.
Pediatricians can promote and use community supports, such as home visiting, quality early care and education, family support, early intervention, and libraries, which are important for addressing school readiness and are too often underused by populations who can benefit most from them. → Finally, we have parents themselves. Yes, it’s true that children demonstrate better readiness for kindergarten if they attended a higher quality, center-based preschool program. But it’s equally true that children are ready for kindergarten when they have parents who love them. Parents who are responsive and positive, parents who are highly engaged and parents who set up their homes as stable, safe spaces to support learning.
CONVENIENT HOURS
7 Days a Week
MON-FRI 8AM - 8PM SAT, SUN 8AM - 6PM
WE ARE HERE WHEN YOU NEED US.
Walk-In Care for Children Ages Newborn to 18
Is your child’s primary care provider closed on the weekend? No problem. Our Pediatric Convenient Care offers weekend walk-in care for the treatment of minor illnesses and injuries.
PEDIATRIC PRIMARY CARE OFFERINGS AT OUR 10 LOCATIONS
• Newborn care • Treatment of minor illnesses • Immunizations & physicals • Well-child appointments • Ongoing care for chronic conditions
