By Travers La Ville

Correspondent 

Published April 14, 2010

A community-level effort spearheaded by United Way of Baytown Area is ready to combat the problem of youngsters entering kindergarten unprepared due to underdeveloped skills.

This effort is a three-pronged endeavor involving:

• A committee focused on the interactions between adults and children in a child care setting.

• A committee focused on the impact that adults and caregivers in neighborhoods have on children.

• A steering committee to oversee the work of the other two bodies.

A program called Parents as Teachers, recommended by the committee focusing on neighborhoods, seems to be a good start to curbing the issue in skill deficiency, according to David Mohlman, executive director of United Way of Baytown Area.

“It’s basically a monthly home visit by trained parent educators,” Mohlman said. “The program looks like it will be a great resource for parents and in early education.”

The director said there are still questions to be answered before the program can be implemented, but partners in the effort believe it could begin sometime during 2010.

“Currently, there is no timeframe,” Molman said. “We are working to get it in place as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

The director also said parents in the same residential area can partner together in cooperation with PAT.

“Ideally the families will be in close proximity,” Mohlman said. “The personal visits are the greatest resource; everything else builds off that.”

The director said the community program would not be a new agency attached to United Way but a local effort pulling resources from many different aspects.

“Traditionally, United Way raises funds and disperses them to agencies accordingly to carry out their missions, but with the targeted community impact this will be different,” Mohlman said. “We are trying to change a community condition, which is a much broader scale than one demographics needs and to do so we will need to involve as many groups and organizations in our community as possible.”

Both Goose Creek and Barbers Hill school districts have administrators serving on the committee.

Mohlman said of the 2,000 children who started school in Barbers Hill and GCCISD, more than half in GCCISD were found unprepared.

“We appreciate the involvement of the area districts,” he said. “The schools have more to do with the success of children once they get into a school setting. But it is important for the community to own the development of children before entering school, and we owe it to our educators and to our children to make sure children have sufficient skills.”

This article has been reprinted with permission from The Baytown Sun.
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