LAUP's 1st Preschool Nation Summit a Success

NEW YORK, Aug. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, LAUP (Los Angeles Universal Preschool) hosted the country's first Preschool Nation Summit. Held at the world headquarters of Scholastic Inc. in New York City, the summit featured Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is currently implementing his "Pre-K for All" program, as keynote speaker.

The Preschool Nation Summit featured prominent panelists such as New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina, as well as executives from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's office, Wings of Eagles Discovery Center, Too Small to Fail, First Five Years Fund, the National Institute for Early Education Research, LAUP, Acelero Learning, Hanover Provident Capital, the National Women's Law Center, the Partnership for Community Action, the National Governors Association, the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, Mission: Readiness, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids and ReadyNation. The summit examined the short- and long-term benefits of quality early education, successes and challenges of early learning programs around the country, the need to define and improve quality and more.

"The summit represented just one component of LAUP's larger Preschool Nation advocacy platform," LAUP's CEO Celia C. Ayala said. Preschool Nation, www.PreschoolNation.org, is comprised of more than 40 partnering organizations and serves as a resource for parents, educators, early education organizations, community leaders and businesses around the country.

Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina are overseeing an ambitious project: to enroll more than 50,000 children in the mayor's Pre-K for All program by this September. The mayor's office reports that a total of about 73,000 four-year-olds in the city need pre-K, and that the City will enroll all eligible children by the 2015-16 school year. Ayala said de Blasio's pre-kindergarten program is setting the stage for the rest of them.

Pre-K for All builds on a growing national movement to expand access to pre-K, including the effort that began in Los Angeles County more than a decade ago with the creation of LAUP. Through a voter-approved tobacco tax, the First 5 LA Commission oversaw the development of LAUP, a nonprofit organization that has provided funding and quality coaching for more than 640 preschools, preparing about 105,000 preschoolers for kindergarten and managing one of the largest early care and education workforce consortiums in the country.

At the summit, Mayor de Blasio commended the work that LAUP is doing.

LAUP is "putting into action these ideas…" he said. "… the idea of saying, you know, it's not enough that some kids get pre-k, or some kids get preschool opportunities, or some kids get them for a small part of the day, but…the goal here is to reach every child, and to reach them with a full enough program that it will have a transcendent impact on their lives. That's what I think is so powerful about saying, we're going to have a national meeting and call it 'Preschool Nation,' saying this is actually a mandate for all of us, to reach children consistently and pervasively."

"You see now the outline of a truly national movement," de Blasio said. "I hope what we're doing in New York City contributes greatly to it…you see all over the country people finding their way, all different paths, all variations on a theme, but finding their way to major investments in early childhood education.

The mayor said one of the next steps is to create a national definition of quality for early childhood education.

"We've got to really create one standard," he said. "We've got to say that full-day high quality pre-K is going to be the national standard. We've got the examples. We've got the success stories. I hope that this summit will be remembered as another moment along the way, where things started to turn, where the consensus became deeper, where action became something that people really decided to pursue relentlessly – and it has to be relentless. LAUP wouldn't have gotten as far as it got without relentlessness. We wouldn't have been able to get the full-day pre-K in this city without relentlessness. This is a movement that can't turn back."

Scholastic Inc., the global children's publishing, education and media company, was the presenting sponsor of the Preschool Nation Summit. Plans for a Preschool Nation Summit in Los Angeles are underway for spring 2015.

About LAUP
LAUP has raised the level of quality preschool programs throughout Los Angeles County by advancing teacher training, enriching curricula and creating a safe and nurturing environment for more than 105,000 children since its inception. LAUP is funded in part by First 5 LA. www.laup.net.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140806/133911

SOURCE Los Angeles Universal Preschool