By Olaf Growald
Fort Worth is in its fifth year of events under the Raising of Fort Worth umbrella to boost early learning. The newest stage of the initiative: building Fort Worth as “The Best Place for Kids,” a four-pillar strategy that includes developing a best-in-class child care facility model, mapping child care deserts in Fort Worth, and repurposing buildings for child care or upgrading existing facilities; inspiring family-friendly business practices; using summer school spaces as early education hubs; and publicly recognizing great places and spaces for kids.
A consortium of organizations, with Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, is leading the Raising of Fort Worth: The Miles Foundation, First3Years, Lena Pope, Early Learning Alliance, North Texas Community Foundation, Child Care Associates, Rainwater Charitable Foundation, Camp Fire First Texas, and Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.
The implications of having inadequate child care are broad. Only 34% of Fort Worth public school third-graders read on level today, a critical workforce development issue. Fort Worth has a large percentage of young families. “If families have to drop out of the workforce because of children, what happens to them?” Price says of those kids.
The community is behind in its goal of having all third-graders reading on level by 2025 — the 100 x 25 initiative. “If we’re going to hit our goal of 100 x 25, we have to work on preschool, cradle to third grade, and, ultimately, cradle to career,” Price said in an interview.
On facilities, Child Care Associates and Huckabee architects are building an Early Learning Innovation Studio that they call a best-in-class model.
Best business practices come off of research showing parents who have access to high-quality child care demonstrate higher performance and retention at work. Local chambers of commerce and business leaders are developing an online “business self-assessment” that employers can use to assess their family-friendliness in 10 areas with proven return on investment: core benefits such as health care coverage, paid time off, and maternity leave; culture; resources such as on-site child care, child care assistance, and backup child care; and workplace flexibility policies, including flexible hours and ability to work from remote or home.
The assessment will become the nominating vehicle for earning a Best Place for Working Parents designation and three Best Place for Working Parents Innovator Awards. Price will hand out the 2020 Innovator Awards at her annual State of the City address in February, in the Event, Policy and Family Resource categories.
“We want to recognize businesses that are doing great things,” Price said. The city of Fort Worth, for one, needs to re-examine its own leave policies, she said. “We have to start first with our child care policy.”
The goal of the initiatives isn’t to dictate policy to employers, Price said. “Our goal is to raise the profile, to put some momentum around this. We know now kids need to be ready when they hit kindergarten.”