A chartered pre-school could be in the works for Madison area residents. One City Early Learning Center announced their intention to apply for becoming a charter for early childhood learning at a community event on Madison’s south side on Oct. 31.
The One City Board of Directors will be voting in late November on whether or not to approve applying to become a charter for 4k and 5k at One City. If approved, they will continue to be seeking funds to expand to two additional school buildings as well as continue to renovate One City’s current school building near South Park in conjunction with Forward Community Investments.
“So what we’re trying to do is make sure families can afford a high quality pre-school so our interest is in establishing One City as a charter so we can make sure we depress the cost as much as possible for families,” said One City founder and CEO Kaleem Caire. “We would be able to charter four-year-olds and five-year-olds for pre-school. As a charter, you don’t charge the families, you get money from the state. So we’d have to raise funds in order to pay for our school building and to subsidize the costs for families.”
Caire said that they have raised $3 million already for the project but are in need of as many donations as possible to bring the level of education needed to help struggling communities, especially on the south side of Madison.
The charter is deemed necessary to bolster the performances and life outlooks for children of color who are lagging behind their white peers even as they sit next to them in the same classrooms with the same teachers.
Recent statistics from the Madison Metropolitan School District showed that only 11% of black children and 6 percent of Hispanic children in Madison are reading at grade level for third to fifth graders. Caire said that children entering first grade with reading ability and being able to execute basic math are vital future indicators for how that child will perform in school moving forward.
The launch of a pre-school charter will enable kids from communities of color to compete with the kids from across the city by providing a place where families don’t have to pay for the type of early learning many in white communities and more affluent communities are able to afford. It will also empower families of color to feel like they are part of crucial decision-making when it comes to their children’s academics.
Caire spoke at the community event about the need for poor families to be able to have a say when it comes to decisions about what is good for their children’s education.
“Our families here are 80 percent living in poverty and don’t have the ability to fight these fights,” Caire said. “They are being held hostage by those who are able to, while our kids are held as test model cases for failure. But the reality is these wealthier folks make all the decisions about what’s good for our kids.”
Seventy-five percent of black children who are in the Madison Metropolitan School District are living in poverty. Studies show that only 177 of 328 black students who started 9th Grade in 2009 in the MMSD graduated in 2013. And only 34% of children on the south side of Madison are enrolled in top-quality early childhood centers compared to 60% of children in Madison overall.
Caire says that kids who have been to preschool are far ahead of their peers who did not attend preschool. He said that One City will expand to kindergarten beginning next year and is hopeful that a 4k and 5k charter model would show that they can get kids ready for school, make it as inexpensive as possible and make sure kids are able to continue to succeed after kindergarten.
In the Fall of 2018, One City will be using the Alliant Energy Center to host a fundraising event with what Caire hopes will be A-list entertainment. The funds would help with the cost of the school building that would need to be built. Caire says they have not yet determined a site for the new building.
“We think that preschool education should be free regardless of race or income to all families in the state of Wisconsin,” Caire said.
