Stay up-to-date on the latest news about early childhood from GEEARS, our early childhood partners across the nation, and from media outlets.
By: AJC Rhanatah Harrison and her husband have two little kids and demanding jobs, so they had a problem when their Decatur preschool didn’t open as expected after the holidays. They can both work from home but it’s hard to get anything done with the children, 4 and 1, at their feet. One parent takes […]
By: GEEARS for Saporta Report Earlier this fall, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), and the Children’s Hospital Association declared a national emergency in children’s mental health. As evidence, they cited a CDC report, which found that between March and October 2020, emergency department visits for mental health […]
By: PAACT for Saporta Report The City of Atlanta’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, known as OEDI, is on a mission to leverage the combined power of government, private and non-profit partners, and communities to dismantle systemic inequities and barriers to opportunity. The newly codified executive office is harnessing the power of aligning strong leadership […]
By: GEEARS for Saporta Report Lead poisoning isn’t just a problem in Flint, Michigan, and toxic lead levels aren’t just found in drinking water. Over the last year, GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students has been working with community leaders on the Westside of Atlanta, where lead slag found in a grandmother’s garden soil has […]
By: New York Times Congress is nearing a vote on a plan to spend around $390 billion over six years on early childhood care and education in the United States. Government-supported child care can have lifelong benefits for young children and their families, but it depends how the policies are designed. The proposal, part of […]
By: PAACT for Saporta Report In July 2021 GEEARS commissioned a statewide survey of 400 Georgia parents with children ages 0-4 that focused on a range of topics including child care arrangements and satisfaction levels, general attitudes toward, perceptions of, and preferences for child care, and financial and employment impacts in relation to child care during these […]
By: WSB-TV Thousands of Georgia families will get new help with childcare through an expansion of the state’s Childcare and Parent Services program. Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday that the CAPS program, which helps families with the cost of childcare, will expand to 10,000 more children beginning Nov. 1. New guidelines will increase the entry […]
By: GEEARS for Saporta Report There is a workforce crisis. It is a national issue and also one in Georgia. This issue started before the pandemic and has become more amplified over the past 18 months. It has become increasingly difficult to recruit people to careers in early childhood education. Before and during the pandemic, educators […]
By: Saporta Report The opportunity gap in the City of Atlanta starts early. There are more than 30,000 children in Atlanta who are between the ages of birth to five, and their families face housing, health care, and child care costs that are increasingly out of reach. These challenges make it harder for parents to […]
By: Fortune Sarsha Martin wanted to teach young children. She persevered through three years as an early childhood educator in Jumpstart’s program at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and began her career as a kindergarten paraprofessional. Yet, the low pay, coupled with her student loan debt, forced Sarsha to leave the educator workforce. Sarsha’s brief […]