First published on the Council of Michigan Foundations blog

“There can never be equal opportunity without equal capability,” was one of Focus: HOPE founder Father Bill Cunningham’s aphorisms that made you think twice. The late Father Cunningham, a white priest who became an icon for race equity in Detroit and Michigan, was my teacher in high school, a lifelong mentor and the inspiration that led me to Michigan’s Children.

The data are clear: not all children face the same odds. The goal of public policy advocacy is not to help individual children overcome the odds, but to change the odds—in long-lasting and fundamental ways—for all children.

Sadly, long-term disparities in educational success have had profound and unacceptable economic, social and fiscal consequences for Michigan.  Gaps in learning and achievement can be traced to the earliest years of children’s lives, and continue to grow through their educational careers and into adulthood.  Public policies have created barriers for children and resulted in educational inequities, and public policies can be supported that remove those barriers and promote equity.

In partnership with Michigan’s philanthropic community, Michigan’s Children has advocated for public policy solutions that have been shown to mitigate disparities in outcome for children of color since its inception.  Without a doubt, children in this state have benefited from the laser-like focus of Michigan grantmakers—large and small—on opportunity gaps.

We share the belief that ensuring “equal capability” requires public policies that aren’t just good for all kids and families, but those that promote equity and serve to close the gaps that exist.  “Equal capability” requires having equal access to supports that span from cradle to career – that starts with having parents or caregivers who have the supports they need to be their child’s first, best and consistent teacher; access to high quality early care and education that promotes early literacy and school readiness; and a strong K-12 system that allows additional learning opportunities out of school and utilizes the 5th and 6th years of high school to complete a credential.

The single best predictor of economic prosperity is a state’s success in educating and preparing its workforce. Investing in children, particularly those most challenged by their circumstances, must be a key part of rebuilding and strengthening Michigan’s economy. With the next workforce set to be its most diverse yet, Michigan’s Children is working to strengthen policies that promote equity across races and ethnicities so that all children can thrive in school, the work place and life.

There never will truly be “equal opportunity” for all of Michigan’s children until each and every child from families of color or low-income communities is seen by all of us as a future contributor to vibrant communities and a strong state, and not a potential resource that we allow to go to waste.

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When State Schools Superintendent Mike Flanagan announced that Steelcase Foundation President Susan Broman would be Michigan’s first director of the newly created Office of Great Start, whoops of joy went up among advocates for early childhood services.

“What I would tell you is the day it was announced e-mails were flying around the state from all of those who had been involved in early childhood, and the common message was this is a home run,” said Marianne Udow, director of the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation in Ann Arbor who also has worked for years to expand early childhood services in Michigan.

Both Udow, who was the spark behind the creation of the Early Childhood Investment Corporation (ECIC) in 2005 when she was the director of the state Department of Human Services, and Broman served on Michigan’s Children’s Board of Directors together for a number of years, helping to focus our advocacy on creating a viable system of early childhood services.

“Isn’t it exciting that she will be doing this?” Udow said of Broman.

Governor Rick Snyder announced last June the creation of the Office of Great Start to consolidate and coordinate a variety of early childhood development and learning programs, as well as the search for a director who could get the Office of Great Start off to, well, a great start.

Broman, who has headed the Steelcase Foundation since 1996, spent a few weeks tying up loose ends at the Foundation before beginning the new position as director of the Office of Great Start which is housed in the state Department of Education.

“Susan is just a great listener,” Flanagan said. “I’ve watched her in meetings where she clearly has no need to be the center of attention, and yet here are all the players who were speaking to her even though she was not leading the meeting.”

In Grand Rapids, Broman had taken lead roles in the creation of “First Steps,” a community partnership building a coordinated system of early childhood services for children from birth to five years old in Kent County. 

A legislative priority for Michigan’s Children in 2012 is to “carve out” at least 20 percent of any increased funding for the Great Start School Readiness Program for programs serving young children from birth to age 3 and their families.

“Based on what we know from brain research, why wouldn’t we heavily invest in the first 1,000 days?” Broman said. “We know what we need to do. We now need to have the courage to realign our resources so we invest more on the front end (early childhood) rather than the back end (criminal justice, etc.). We need to base policy decisions based on data and outcomes, rather than ideology.”

Broman’s predecessor at the Foundation, Kate Pew Wolters, had pushed for the Foundation’s grant of $1.8 million for a “Healthy Start” program made in 1995.

“She says it’s my fault for getting her involved in early childhood,” Wolters said in a phone interview.  “This was one of the biggest grants we’ve ever made in the Foundation’s history and I told her I need you to keep an eye on this and make sure they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. I was pleased that she took that to heart and ended up getting involved in a variety of early childhood issues and initiatives in the community, which is great for us. The Foundation was very interested in the notion of prevention and the notion of making sure that everybody has the tools that they need to live their lives to the fullest.”

Broman also became involved in efforts to build a better early childhood system statewide, including several years as a member of the Michigan’s Children Board of Directors. Michigan’s Children has long been involved with bridging early childhood efforts as a member of the steering committee for the Michigan Child Care Task Force and then with the Ready to Succeed Partnership and the Early Learning Michigan project.

Broman’s interest in early childhood systems stems in part from her work for many years in substance abuse treatment programs and systems and seeing how many clients had endured severe negative experiences such as neglect or abuse when they were infants and toddlers. How to prevent such tragedies became her career-long obsession and focus of her efforts to make systems operate more efficiently with limited resources in order to provide as many people as possible the help they need.

Broman was a member of the Resource Allocators Consortium in Kent County, an informal body of public and private funders who meet monthly to talk about issues and projects.  At the RAC meetings, Broman got to know Kate Pew Wolters, the director of the Steelcase Foundation. In 1996, when Mrs.  Wolters announced she was retiring to spend more time with her husband, she urged Broman to apply for the job.

At Steelcase, Broman began managing grants that totaled about $8 million a year (from about $129 million in endowment funds) shortly before the stock market plunge in 2008. The Foundation contributed about $4 million to charities in 2011, Broman said.

Broman is known as a listener who seeks input from a variety of sources. “I spend a fair amount of time listening and trying to understand different people’s perspectives on issues before launching off on a solution,” she said.

Respect for Broman grew widespread among the Foundation and non-profit communities in western Michigan.

In 1998, when Milt Rohwer was named president of the Grand Rapids-based Frey Foundation, he went to Broman for advice on how to be a responsible funder.

“I needed to talk with her about the world of philanthropy,” Rohwer said. “She had a number of suggestions. The Foundation for which she worked and the Foundation for which I worked both had a philosophy of grant-making that suggested we needed to partner with other Foundations rather than pay for an entire project ourselves.”

One common mission for both Foundations was to find ways to coordinate, expand and raise the quality of early childhood services in the Grand Rapids area.

“Repeatedly, we found ourselves working together, both at a state level initially and then for the last 10 years at a local level trying to deal with that challenge,” Rohwer said.”And we served on the board of several of the same organizations. There was a lot of information sharing and aligning of what we were doing within policy mandates” from their Boards of Trustees.

“I think her government service, in particular with the county, does two things for her,” Rohwer said. “It gives her an idea about what public sector bureaucracies are like and how to work within them and, secondly, it gives her an insight into how state government works because the relationship between the county government and state government is very close. She’s uniquely well-oriented to that world and how to operate within it. I don’t know anybody who has a better background.”

Coming from a corporate Foundation also has given Broman “special insight into what the private sector thinks and believes, and that can only help as well,” Rohwer said.

Broman and Rohwer were among the “masterminds” for the development of “First Steps,” a community partnership building a coordinated system of early childhood services for children from birth to five years old in Kent County that was co-chaired by Wolters and Doug DeVos.

Lew Chamberlin, CEO of the Whitecaps baseball team which is a minor league affiliate of the Detroit Tigers baseball club, said he came to know Broman through their work on the Board of “First Steps” where he came “to appreciate her passion and her drive, which I think she’s going to bring to this new job and I think it’s going to benefit the entire state.”

“As far as her appointment by the Governor, the one thing that it really says to me, which I like, is that it shows that the Governor is serious about this office,” said Chamberlin, a member of the Children’s Leadership Council of Michigan (CLCM), an informal group of business professionals who advocate for public support of high quality early childhood services.

“You know he could’ve just picked anyone he wanted from the bureaucracy and kind of take the path of least resistance, if you know what I mean,” Chamberlin said. “But, he didn’t. He picked somebody he knew was going to be serious about this and was going to make this happen. That’s very encouraging to me.”

For the past three years, Michigan’s Children has worked with partners the ECIC and the Center for Michigan to create the CLCM. A priority for Michigan’s Children, the CLCM and other partners is more state support for programs that serve children from birth to age 3 – right in line with Broman’s focus on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.

Please visit our early childhood page to learn more about what we're doing for young children in our state.

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Lettie-Ann Miller, a Detroit teenager who likes to wear her hair in multiple colors, grew up with a negative impression of her neighborhood.  

Fifteen-year-old Lettie-Ann was planning to leave the city as soon as she graduated from Osborn Math, Science and Technology High School where she is a sophomore carrying a 4.0 grade point average.

But that was before her involvement with Our Life in the D, the innovative journalism and youth leadership development project launched by Michigan’s Children in 2010. “Before I didn’t know much about Detroit,” she said. “I just thought it was a place where I lived. Now I consider it more like a home.”

Lettie-Ann is one of the dozen youths in the Our Life in the D program, teens who are learning to ask questions, explore solutions for issues facing children and families in Detroit and to write compellingly from their points of view in an accurate and fair manner.

According to OLiD’s managing editor, China Cochran, Lettie-Ann has blossomed from a smart, but shy 14-year-old into an active and engaged member of her community.  

“She knew that when she grew up, she wanted to leave Detroit but being in the program she learned more about” the city, Cochran said. “And she wants to be here. If she goes away to college she wants to come back to help Detroit and make a positive impact.”

Lettie-Ann already is having a positive impact on the Osborn community, said Wayne Ramocan, program coordinator for the Osborn Neighborhood Alliance. “Lettie-Ann, particularly over the last summer, has been covering our stories and doing a lot of stuff. That’s why we felt it was so important to recognize her for that.”

Just before Thanksgiving, the ONA gave Lettie-Ann its Youth Community Leader award as part of the Osborn Community Pride Week. Lettie-Ann’s stories appear on the OLiD website – www.ourlifeinthed.com – and in the Osborn Voice community newsletter.

“There has been a difference in how people are responding” to the youths voices participating in OLiD, Ramocan said. “We’ve been partnering with Our Life in the D and China and Danielle (Daguio, the OLiD assistant editor) and the kids. We’re using it as a catalyst to: One, strengthen our partnerships in the area; and, two, to tell stories and disseminate information through the Osborn Voice; and, three, with Our Life in the D’s goals to really share those positive stories.”

Lettie-Ann also was honored on November 19 by the National Congress of Black Women – Greater Detroit Chapter for her accomplishments that include honor roll status at Osborn MST, her work with OLiD, and her “compelling opinion piece on her first experience taking the bus” in Detroit, according to the NCBW.                                                                      
 

State Rep. Alberta Tinsley-Talabi and Lettie-Ann

“Our Life in the D taught me stuff about journalism and I was able to do better in school,” she said. “I was a good writer before but the teachers said since I got into the program that my writing in school has improved. … With Our Life in the D I got to learn about discovering different neighborhoods in Detroit, and I got to find out more about the mayor and City Council and things like that.”

Detroit Councilmember JoAnn Watson and Lettie-Ann

Since the program launched its website in November 2010, the OLiD journalists have posted more than 115 stories and eight You Tube videos, and they have engaged in numerous community events and forums.

Lettie-Ann joins several young OLiD journalists who have been recognized in their communities and by other organizations for their work, their commitment to improving their communities, and for their potential as future leaders.

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Every baby deserves a first birthday.
 
But too many – nearly 1,000 – Michigan infants die every year in their first 12 months of life, tragedies that disproportionately affect families of color and puts Michigan among the states with the worst infant mortality rates.

So, we congratulate Governor Rick Snyder on his statements at the opening of an important Infant Mortality Summit in Ypsilanti on October 17: “We’ve got this (infant mortality) up on our dashboard,” Snyder said in his summit address. “On the state dashboard, not just the health and wellness dashboard, because this is something we really need to do a better job on that is an important indicator of how well our state is. And more important, we’re talking about real lives.”

Michigan’s infant mortality rate is about eight per 1,000 live births, compared to a national average of seven deaths per 1,000 live births. As bad as that is, Michigan has gained ground over past several years, reducing the rate from about 10 deaths per 1,000 live births.

But, as a recent Race Matters report from Michigan’s Children says, that reduction in infant deaths was driven mostly by a large drop in infant mortality for white babies. Today, Hispanic babies die at nearly twice the rate of white babies and African American babies die at three times the rate of white babies.

That disparity is shocking, but reflects inequities that create barriers to a healthy life for children of color. Systemic policies, practices and stereotypes work against racial and ethnic minorities, including women of child-bearing age. Studies to better understand the high infant mortality rate among black infants have found that life experiences and covert racism – as opposed to blatant or overt racism – increases preterm births.

How so, you might ask. Covert racism has been linked to sustained, elevated cortisol hormone levels in the human body. High levels of cortisol are indicators of high stress which, in turn, can impact fetuses, leading to premature birth and low birth weight.

And then there are structural barriers for young women of color to lead healthy lifestyles – less access to a quality education or employment, fewer opportunities to buy fresh produce and to find safe places to exercise, and no health insurance.

To level the playing field – and to ensure that more babies are born healthy and live to see their first birthdays – policymakers must better understand how current policies impact racial-ethnic disparities and how improved policy can reduce the disparities in outcomes for mothers and babies.

One thing the Legislature can do is to increase Medicaid provider payments to the same level as Medicare and create financial incentives for the full range of health services needed by low-income women and young children. There is an acute shortage of specialty doctors (i.e., obstetricians, gynecologists and pediatricians) and few of them are willing to accept patients on Medicaid because it pays only a percentage of what it costs to provide services.  Although there would be higher costs initially, taxpayers save money by lowering emergency room use by low-income families and by reducing developmental and cognitive delays in children that result in the need for special education and lower educational achievement.

As the Governor said, one of the best ways to measure the health of our state is to measure how healthy our children are.  And, according to the data gathered by Michigan’s Children and the governor’s own dashboard, our high infant mortality rates show that Michigan is an unhealthy state for many infants, particularly for children from families of color.

Simply talking about high infant mortality rates won’t save the lives of babies. Now is the time for citizens to demand that the Governor and the Legislature work with health care providers, insurers, community groups and non-profit organizations to support programs that provide pregnant women and infants with what they need to thrive.

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Like many other Detroiters, Congressman John Conyers had never heard of Our Life in the D (OLiD), Michigan’s Children’s innovative journalism project that is helping to increase civic engagement and lift up the voices of young people in the city.

But after Conyers stopped by the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History recently to meet the OLiD teens, he was suitably impressed with the work of the dozen young journalists this past summer, promised to go to their website (www.ourlifeinthed.com), and invited them to come to his office soon to continue talking to him about ways public policies can be improved to help struggling families and children.

“It is great that you are involved and that you are using writing to help your community,” Conyers told the teens, all of them young people of color and nearly all of them Detroiters. The dinner was set to celebrate the accomplishments of the 12 young journalists involved in OLiD’s summer session. As a part of the celebration, each of the youths received a Spirit of Detroit award signed by all nine members of City Council. Some of the youths’ video projects were shown as Conyers, State Senator Coleman A. Young, Jr., parents and other guests looked on.

The teens said the experience opened their eyes to issues that impact their communities, neighborhoods and families.  “I saw an entire side of Detroit that a lot of people don’t see,” said 16-year-old Caleb Browner, of the Casa Richard Academy on Detroit’s southwest side. “It’s been so veiled, you usually see only the bad things.”

Brittany Moore, 16, who attends Dearborn’s Henry Ford Academy, said she learned “you can’t be afraid to ask questions; you’ve got to get out and talk to people on your own.  The more stories you do, you learn more and it gets easier.”

Lettie-Ann Miller, a 15-year-old sophomore at Osborn Math Science Tech, said she learned about social justice. “I had no idea what that was,” she said. “I found out that there were a lot of people working on social justice in Detroit that I didn’t know about.”

And George Copeland, Jr., 18, graduated in May from the Bradford Academy in Southfield, said the experience will help him as he starts his college career at Saginaw Valley State University. “My favorite was meeting the Young Democrats and John Conyers,” Copeland said. “I never knew you could just talk to a Congressman like just a normal person. It opened my eyes. …It’s great because we know that kids do have a voice. You have a voice and you can be heard.”

OLiD offers young people the chance to learn skills to become citizen journalists producing high-quality content for local websites, TV and radio while boosting involvement in community and civic life.

Michigan’s Children educates OLiD youths on public policy issues, helps connect OLiD youths with local and state officials, and encourages the youths to ask probing questions about what can be done to help vulnerable children and families.  What the young people are saying and reporting on also helps to guide Michigan’s Children’s work – helping to set policy priorities, and identifying potential partnerships.

The goals of OLiD are to help youths become engaged in civic affairs; to help build their awareness of issues impacting children, families and communities; and to give young people a voice in the conversation about how to improve their city, state and nation.

You’ll be hearing more about Our Life in the D in the coming months as the new school year begins. This Michigan’s Children project is made possible by generous grants from the Skillman Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the McGregor Fund.  You can also check OLiD out on Facebook (and “like” the project there).

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The two people most responsible for my passion and commitment to improving opportunities for all children are no longer with us in the physical sense. 

Father Bill Cunningham, my high school English and Drama teacher before co-founding Focus: HOPE in Detroit, died in 1997. A tornado ripped through the Focus: HOPE campus a few weeks later. His partner and co-founder Eleanor Josaitis died the morning of August 9 just as a heavy storm rolled through the Detroit area. Both have left us with remarkable legacies of passion and caring for children and families faced with daunting challenges, including dire poverty.

Together with another Catholic priest, Jerry Fraser, Cunningham and Josaitis founded a unique civil rights organization – Focus: HOPE – in 1968 that served as the conscience of the metropolitan Detroit community and worked tirelessly on practical ways to give hope and to forge opportunity for the forgotten and marginalized.

I was a volunteer with Focus: HOPE from its inception until August 1969 when the priest and the “suburban housewife” as Eleanor became known conspired to get me hired at the Detroit Free Press as a copy boy.  While I struggled to become a professional journalist, Eleanor and Bill were finding ways to feed malnourished children in the city with surplus food that the federal government had paid farmers to produce but then went to waste.  Their efforts convinced the federal government to address the issue of chronic hunger and to expand the surplus food commodities program in Detroit and other cities.  

Recognizing that children needed parents who had jobs and economic security, Eleanor and Bill also began a skilled-trades school that helped lift tens of thousands of people out of poverty and into the middle class. The impact on the children of those folks is profound.  
In the 1970s, Focus: HOPE created a program to address racial tensions in Detroit high schools – then predominantly white – by training ethnically diverse groups of teenagers about ways to counteract the evil of racism.

Eleanor’s advocacy on behalf of children was relentless and optimistic, despite the obstacles that she and Cunningham faced overcoming a lack of government investment and public support that mitigated the challenges of poverty for children and their families.
This is how Eleanor put it when she testified before Detroit City Council on December 10, 1974, just one talk in a career of moving speeches to help children:

“Hunger in Detroit hurts babies’ brains, chipping off I.Q.,” she told the Council. “Hunger softens bones and puts toddlers on bowed legs. Hunger twists emotions and leaves children hostile, hating, hurt for life. Hunger fills classrooms with tired, listless pupils of the poor. Hunger is anemia, rickets, mental retardation, hostility. Hunger is death by premature birth and infant disease.” 

That was 37 years ago, and Eleanor’s efforts to improve the lives of children did not stop until her death from cancer. Over the decades, she and Cunningham made countless trips to Washington, educated thousands of people who visited the Focus: HOPE campus in Detroit and fought hard on behalf of others, especially for children, with little concern about their own well-being.  They challenged government officials, corporate titans and insurance companies to do better for the poor. 

Together, they built a movement of people who marched, wrote letters and demanded action of government and the public to counter the long-term effects of racism and build opportunity for all.   

Of all the lessons about child advocacy that I learned from Father Cunningham and Eleanor Josaitis, the most important is this: Advocacy is not a one-time activity in which someone makes one phone call or sends a single e-mail to a policymaker. True child advocacy requires persistence, passion, patience and hope beyond measure. Influencing public policy to better all of our lives – while taking practical action to alleviate suffering and eliminating obstacles – was what Eleanor Josaitis and Bill Cunningham were all about.  

And while we face daunting challenges today in ensuring that all children throughout the state grow up healthy, safe, well-educated and prepared to join a creative and skilled workforce, I will count it as a success if a little bit of Eleanor and Bill lives on in the work we do at Michigan’s Children.  

Thank you, Eleanor Josaitis.

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Why did the Michigan Legislature push through the fiscal year 2012 budget – decimating many programs that help struggling children succeed – before it fully understood what the revenue picture for the coming year was?

It’s been decades since the Legislature passed a budget this early, but if they had just waited a few weeks many essential services that provide for the health, safety and education of our children could have been spared.

Haste makes waste, they say, and in the Michigan’s budget, the waste will be the lost opportunities to thousands of Michigan’s children.

Lawmakers met their arbitrary and speeded-up deadline by completing one of their most important responsibilities—deciding how the state’s scarce resources should be divided. But did the accelerated process result in good public policy? Does this budget help us move toward the outcomes the Governor has articulated in his “dashboard,” or more recently in his education address?

There are two sides to any budget:  the money raised (revenues and taxes), and the dollars spent.  On the revenue side, the recent actions of the Michigan Legislature and the Governor created a distinct shift in the tax burden from businesses to individuals, including a deep cut in the state’s Earned Income Tax credit (EITC). The EITC is a tax refund of about $400 per person that has kept thousands of working poor families out of poverty and off welfare. Earlier this year, we thought the EITC would be tossed out, even though in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan created the credit, saying it was the most effective way to help children and families in poverty. But, thanks to many advocates including Michigan’s Children working with key legislative leaders, the EITC was preserved for working poor families, albeit at six percent of the federal EITC when last year it was 20 percent.

On the spending side, there were troubling cuts that will make it even harder to move the dial on critical “dashboard” indicators, including child poverty, infant mortality and college readiness. For example, although we know that children who live in extreme poverty are less likely to be healthy and prepared for school, the budget eliminates basic income assistance for over 12,500 poor families with children, essentially eliminates the clothing allowance for poor children, continues to pare back spending for health prevention and promotion programs, and reduces funding for local public and mental health services. 

Further, even though the evidence is clear that too many Michigan young people will never have a toe-hold in the current workforce because they are dropping out of school, proven programs that provide youths with alternative paths to graduation, such as Middle Colleges, were defunded. 

There are some bright lights in this troubling budget. The Governor has focused on reading proficiency by third grade as a goal, and to that end, he and the Legislature supported early childhood programs that have been shown to increase achievement. The approval of a $6 million increase in the Great Start School Readiness Program is the kind of investment Michigan needs to begin the process of rebuilding its economy and workforce, and we applaud the Legislature’s wisdom in taking that step. Early childhood programs have the potential to move the state in the right direction, but the positive outcomes of early childhood education programs will be more difficult to sustain if other vital human services are decimated.

In addition to ensuring that children enter kindergarten ready to learn, we must guarantee that those schools are ready and able to build on early learning opportunities and provide high quality services that are linked to parents and communities. We must also guarantee investments in young people who struggle to stay in school or have already been disengaged. We need both ready kids and ready schools as we build a comprehensive P-20 (prenatal to age 20) system for learning in Michigan. Without them, efforts to improve schools and increase educational achievement will fail, and initiatives to expand access to higher education and modernize the state’s economy will not work.  

Legislative leaders and the Governor keep saying that steps taken over the last few months are needed to build our state’s future, and “shared sacrifice” is necessary to achieve our goals. But, how are we going to develop a young, creative and talented workforce for the future if we don’t provide the building blocks for their success?  In the end, the irony is that many of the priorities evident in the state’s 2012 budget will very likely work against the “dashboard” outcomes that the Administration wants to be evaluated against, and “shared sacrifice” still looks like disproportionate sacrifice by the most vulnerable among us. 

What we were repeatedly told by legislative leaders was that this budget is the best the state can do at this point in time.

But, these serious, harmful cuts were made before analyses of revenues were complete. Now, it looks like there will be another $500 million in revenues available in the current fiscal year and $660 million next year.

In other words, most of these cuts were not even necessary to balance the budget.

At times like these – when vulnerable kids have unmet medical needs, are coming to kindergarten unprepared to learn in a school setting, and are dropping out – it is plain wrong to knock out the few supports that exist.

We shouldn’t be talking about what we can do to help our children succeed, but what we should do.

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The BlackBerry on my belt buzzed as I drove back to Lansing through a heavy rainstorm after attending Governor Rick Snyder’s news conference announcing a series of education reforms that included expansion of high quality early childhood programs.

“Hello, my friend,” said a well-respected philanthropist and member of the Children’s Leadership Council business executives group pushing the governor and legislature for months to adequately fund early childhood programs.

He called, though not to celebrate but to ask: “What did the governor leave out?”

An excellent question. While my answers to my business friend were short and off-the-cuff, let me give you a better idea of what is being left behind as the governor and legislature finalize the state’s 2012 fiscal year budget. A new Budget Basics report from Michigan’s Children shows how the budget affects young children more in depth, but briefly:

Child poverty. Nearly one in five Michigan children lives in dire poverty, a percentage that continues to grow. In fact, Gov. Snyder’s own dashboard unveiled during his State of the State makes reducing child poverty a goal. Yet, he and the legislature seem intent on eliminating or drastically cutting back programs that help mitigate the effects of poverty on children, particularly the very young children the governor keeps saying he wants to help become ready for school.

Case in point: Virtual elimination of the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor. In an apparent effort to mollify critics of the idea, the House has substituted the EITC for a $25-per-child tax credit. If that stands, it means that a single mother with two children earning $15,000 a year would lose $584. For many working families struggling with low-wage jobs, that cut can be the difference between fixing an old car, buying new shoes for the kids or paying for child care.

Although all children suffer when they live in poverty, the negative impact of poverty on preschool children is especially pernicious. We know poverty in early childhood compromises children’s school success, life achievement and employment opportunities.

A recent report by Stanford University and the Center on the Developing Child says, “Emerging research in neuroscience and developmental psychology suggests that poverty early in a child’s life may be particularly harmful because the astonishingly rapid development of children’s brains leaves them sensitive (and vulnerable) to environmental conditions. Poverty and economic insecurity take a toll on a parent’s mental health, which may be an important cause of low-income parents’ non-supportive parenting. Depression and other forms of psychological distress can profoundly affect parents’ interactions with their children.”

If that isn’t bad enough, the House has eliminated a clothing allowance for most children in the Family Independence Program (FIP). For its part, the Senate kept the clothing allowance (reduced by $200,000) but is requiring that purchase cards only be used in clothing stores. (Call your legislator now to support the Senate version over the House.)

School Aid. It is baffling trying to understand how the governor and legislature can expect to improve student performance by cutting the per-pupil foundation allowance by hundreds of dollars. Yes, incentives to make needed reforms should be included, but these cuts would result in larger class sizes and elimination of many music and arts programs that make learning fun for kids. Many school districts could be forced into immediate fiscal insolvency, and we don’t expect that will help students.

Improving the dropout rate, increasing college readiness of high school grads and increasing the rate of 3rd graders reading at their level are going to be very difficult goals to reach with the types of cuts proposed.

In early childhood, the governor said, the state would set up “dashboard” measurements in key areas that we like, including “Children born healthy” and “Children healthy, thriving and developmentally on track from birth to third grade.”

How those measurements would improve when Mr. Snyder and the legislature are proposing deep cuts to the Healthy Michigan Fund is beyond my ken. The Fund now provides money for critical services like immunization support at the local level, Maternity Outpatient Medical Services, minority health services, pregnancy prevention, school health services and smoking cessation programs — all eliminated or sharply cut back under the budget working its way through the legislature now.

Programs that prevent at-risk kids from being abused or neglected — which impacts their health and school success — also are facing deep cuts even while the number of confirmed victims of child maltreatment grew 15 percent in the last decade.

More abused kids, more babies born to mothers without adequate prenatal care, more cuts to public schools that serve struggling children, less help for children living in poverty. Is that a plan for the better outcomes for children that the governor says he wants to see?

I can’t see it through all this rain.

The article was original posted in DomeMagazine.com on April 29, 2011.

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By Jack Kresnak

“Thump,” went the door in the conference room where two dozen policymakers, advocates and practitioners were learning more about the formative years of a child’s development – birth to five .

“Thump, thump,” the soft pounding continued as Lawrence Schweinhart of the HighScope Educational Research Foundation spoke about the “return on investment” generated by state tax dollars invested in high quality early childhood learning programs for vulnerable children.

The room we were in is where adults go to learn about the Perry Preschool Project, a high quality program which over the last half-century has proven how what happens to very young children before Kindergarten can have a lifelong impact – for good or ill. About a dozen state legislators were among the crowd gathered in Ypsilanti on Monday, March 21, in a legislative briefing organized by Michigan’s Children, HighScope, the Center for Michigan and the Early Childhood Investment Corporation.

Behind Schweinhart was a television set showing what turned out to be a live feed from the room next door – the room where the thumping was coming from.

When the sound on the television set was turned up, it became clear that the thump-thump sounds were boys throwing a ball at a stop-sign target on the door that separated the preschool from the learning room where the adults had gathered.

Over a span of nearly 50 years, literally thousands of people from around the world have sat in the chairs of that conference room watching the television monitor closely as trained professionals help preschoolers learn how to become creative in their play, to take responsibility for mistakes, to be considerate of others and to postpone gratification – all abilities that children need to succeed when they get to school.

The day began with introductory remarks by Michigan’s new Lt. Governor Brian Calley who spoke movingly about the challenges he has faced with his young children, including a 4-year-old daughter with Autism. He said he and his wife decided to do whatever it took to help their daughter be a successful as possible.

“What if we had that attitude with every kid?” Calley said. “What if we said we’re just going to be successful. We’re going to do whatever it takes.”

Judging from his own experience, Calley said, “the earlier you start the more successful you are.”  Calley said that Governor Rick Snyder’s budget, while austere, largely protects funding for early childhood programs.

“The goal was to set a balanced budget and to demonstrate where our real priorities rest,” Calley said.

Schweinhart’s power-point showed that a few thousand dollars invested in a child through a high-quality early learning program saves taxpayers up to $300,000 over that person’s life time in terms of wages earned, taxes paid and crime and justice system costs that are not incurred.

On average, for every $1 invested in high quality early childhood programs saves society $16, and it helps children come to the K-12 system ready to learn and far less likely to have to repeat grades or to drop out of school.  An economic study showed that in 2009 Michigan’s investment in early childhood programs saved $1.1 billion in spending on remedial schooling, special education, poor health, higher dropout rates and criminal justice costs.

That’s why Michigan’s Children is asking Governor Snyder and the state Legislature to hold the line on funding for early childhood programs – as a key strategy in turning around our state’s economy. We’re happy to hear the Governor agrees with that, and his statements about developing a “P-20” mindset – which he describes as Prenatal to age 20 – in state government policy decision making.

Joan Lessen-Firestone, director of the early childhood unit of Oakland Schools, explained recent research into brain development among young children. “The experiences that fill babies’ first days, months and years have a decisive impact on the architecture of their brains and the nature and extent of their adult capabilities,” Firestone said.

Firestone showed several slides depicting the fast development of synapses in a baby’s brain that reach a peak at age 6, and then begin to be pared back by age 14.  She also showed slides of CAT scans of the brains of children with different early childhood experiences that showed clear disruptions in the brain of a child who suffered traumatic experiences as a toddler.

There also were charts showing the disparities in vocabulary among three-year-olds, depending on whether their parents were from the professional class, working class or on welfare.  Typically, by age three the children of professional parents have vocabularies of well over 1,000 words; working class parents less than 600 words and low-income parents less than 300 words.

That means that those children start school already lagging behind their higher-income peers, Firestone said. 

“It is easier to build the brain of a young child, than repair the brain of an adult,” Firestone said.

At a lunch, the bi-partisan group of legislators, business leaders like Phillip W. Fisher and Phil Power, engaged in a thoughtful discussion about how to focus limited state resources into the area where it will do the most good for the most children – early childhood.

“Starting early on you, see very positive results,” said Rep. Mark Ouimet, R-Scio Township, who helped begin the Success by Six project in Washtenaw County several years ago. The project, financed in part by public funding, brought together different public and private organizations to build a cohesive system of help for vulnerable children from prenatal care for pregnant women and infants and toddlers up to age five.

 “Then we took a step back, saw who is doing this piece best and who is doing that piece best and we went back to make sure funding follows,” Ouimet said.

As the policymakers and others were meeting in the next room, everyone was confident that the young children in the Perry Preschool in the next room were getting the best possible early childhood learning experience.

But the question for all of us – both policymakers and the general public – is how do we ensure that all young children have “whatever it takes” to become ready for school, academic success and eventual career? What will it take to make that happen? When can we expect our state to open opportunities for our young people to succeed, and stop shutting doors in their faces? 

When indeed?

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By JACK KRESNAK

Kent County Family Court Judge Patricia Gardner was getting ready to leave her Grand Rapids courtroom last month when I got around to returning her phone call.

Judge Gardner, vice chair of the Michigan’s Children Board of Directors, said  she was headed to Lansing that morning to testify before the House Committee on Children, Families and Seniors. She’d been asked to represent the Probate  Court Judges Association of Michigan at the Committee hearing headed by Rep.Kenneth Kurtz, R-Coldwater, in order to explain to Committee members how the Family Court system works.

She was a bit nervous, Gardner said, and she wanted to know what to expect.

I told her to picture the Watergate hearings from the 1970s – television news crews jockeying for space, still photographers elbowing each other to get a better angle, reporters with microphones and notepads, a standing-room-only crowd before a large group of surly officials ready to skewer witnesses with pointed questions or snarky asides.

Just joking!

The hearing before Rep. Kurtz’ committee would be nothing of the sort, I said. There would be about 20 people tops in the room, including the nine members of the committee.  No photographers, no TV cameras, more than likely no reporters, either.

After assuring Gardner that there was nothing to worry about, I wondered how she would do. I am happy to report she did astoundingly well and served as a model for how to give clear, expert testimony while making important points. I learned a lot from her.

She started by stating three points she would cover:

1)    An overview of the Probate/Family Court system

2)    Discussion of child abuse/neglect cases

3)    Suggested legislative changes to the system in order to address efficiencies and case loads

In her remarks, Gardner said she wanted the Committee members to remember three things:  Programs to prevent child maltreatment do work, permanency for children is paramount, and the process that is needed to successfully conclude cases.

She talked about how most parents who find their families in Family Court admit to allegations that they were unable to properly care for their children, and that full blown trials to decide whether a judge should take temporary legal jurisdiction over vulnerable children are relatively few.  The bulk of the court’s time is spent getting the child welfare system working so that the children can either be returned to their parents sooner rather than later, or if and when to decide whether terminating parental rights would be in the best interests of those children.

Parents can and do love their children, but that doesn’t mean that those children will be safe in their care. “Love doesn’t carry the day,” Gardner told the committee. “Most (children) will tell attorneys they do want to be re-unified” with their families.  But due to unaddressed problems like substance abuse or mental illness, that may not always be possible.

Many issues that have plagued the foster care system are being addressed by the consent decree resulting from the class action lawsuit against Michigan brought by the New York-based Children’s Rights organization, she said. But, spending more resources to meet the terms of that settlement has meant fewer resources that prevent child maltreatment in the first place, Gardner said.

“Please do what you can to protect prevention” programs, she urged the committee. “Prevention works.”

Supporting the professionals who work in child welfare also is important, she said. “The child welfare area in general is one of high burn-out,” she said. “We do some things extremely well and yet we are called to improve.”

Clearly, committee members were impressed with Gardner’s testimony, and I will follow up with committee members to reinforce her message – let’s put more resources into helping children stay safely with their families, a more humane and cost-efficient way of helping children succeed.

Michigan’s Children has worked with the House Committee on Children and Families for many years, particularly with its former Chairman, Dudley Spade, who is now a top official at the state Department of Human Services under the new DHS Director Maura Corrigan, a former Supreme Court Justice. 

This Legislative session, House leadership decided to expand the Committee’s work to include senior citizens.

Rep. Kurtz and several other committee members are new to the Legislature and we continue to meet with these members to educate them about how they can support the vulnerable children of our state.   When I testified before the same committee and in my meetings with committee members, I urged them to develop legislation that would create a “P-20 Council” in Michigan to bridge gaps in education and workforce development, to integrate various initiatives trying to help vulnerable children from “Pre-natal” to age 20, and to create connections for useful partnerships between education, health, social development, community resources, businesses and industries – a concept Governor Rick Snyder embraced in his State of the State address.

We are gratified that many members of the Michigan’s Children Board of Directors like Judge Gardner are willing to speak up and advocate on behalf of vulnerable children.  In this era of declining resources and increasing needs, the more voices raised for children the better, and particularly when those voices belong to respected citizens and professionals in our state.

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