Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston publishes a quarterly journal, Communities & Banking, which focuses on issues of concern to low- and moderate-income communities. We are pleased that early childhood is on the magazine’s radar screen. The Winter 2012 edition featured a story on the importance of third grade reading and Springfield’s citywide Read! campaign to improve early literacy in the Western Massachusetts city. Now the Spring 2012 issue features a story – “Infrastructure Investment Begins with Children” – about efforts by the Children’s Investment Fund to improve the physical condition of early education and care facilities in Massachusetts.

Among community-based facilities the fund surveyed for its recent report, 34% had inadequate heating and cooling, 54% lacked indoor active play space, 20% had one or more classrooms without windows, 22% had indoor air with elevated levels of carbon dioxide, 70% had no classroom sinks, 22% lacked workspace for teachers, and 65% lacked technology for teachers.

“Massachusetts, like other states, has invested significant private and public resources in quality improvement for early care and education and out-of-school-time services, particularly for low-income children,” the Fed story notes. “But quality — and the physical infrastructure to support it — is critical to fulfilling the state’s aspirations for these children, and clearly, the resources to fix problems cannot be found in program operating budgets. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Last fall, the Children’s Investment Fund issued a report — “Building an Infrastructure for Quality – that, among other things, found shortcomings in safety, air quality and indoor space for physical activity in early education and out-of-school-time facilities around the state.  Since then representatives of the fund have traveled throughout the commonwealth to build support to address the problems identified in the report. “We need to expand the definition of quality to include the physical environment,” Mav Pardee, director of the Children’s Investment Fund, tells the Telegram & Gazette.

The video shown above tells the story of how one early education program, the Crispus Attucks Children’s Center in Dorchester, upgraded its indoor and outdoor space and, in the process, improved the learning environment for the children it serves. Another video focuses on the physical transformation of Children’s First Enterprises in rural Granby.

Read Full Post »