As a father of three and a small business owner, I urge other small business owners sit up and take notice of a problem we are all going to face.
Our high school dropout rate in Pierce County is out of control. No amount of testing by WASL will fix that. Once kids reach high school, it is too late. Most of them are not ready to learn when they start school.
Our children need active parenting and enriched early learning programs to prepare for school.
My wife and I read to our kids when they were tiny, and they are old enough now that they will do just fine. But 85 percent of a child’s core brain structure is formed by the time he or she is 3. Less than 4 percent of public school funding has occurred by that time in our kids’ lives.
If you own a business, having kids succeed in school is the best investment you can make as a taxpayer. We all pay for their failure in some other way, in the cost of law enforcement, juvenile justice and social services.
We need to support K-12 schools through property taxes. But we can improve our schools most by sending more kids to kindergarten prepared to learn.
If they start ready, they are far more likely to finish school, and to come to the workplace ready to work.
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